How to Create a World-Class Snack Brand, According to Baken Founder and CEO Rachel Carrasco

At the intersection of Rachel Carrasco’s career in marketing, luxury, and fast-moving consumer goods is Baken, a snack brand that is ready to take on the world.

When people talk about Filipino food, the star of the show is pork—lechon, adobo, and sisig are among the most well-known dishes from the Philippines. In fact, renowned celebrity chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain, upon tasting some freshly cooked lechon, declared it as the “best pig, ever!” With pork at the center of our culinary highlights, it comes as no surprise that one of our very own entrepreneurs has created a snack indulgence masterpiece centered on the country’s favorite meat.  After putting up her own marketing consultancy in the Lion City, Singapore-based marketer and entrepreneur extraordinaire Rachel Carrasco created the premium snack brand Baken, a play on the breakfast favorite, bacon. With the award-winning snack currently available for shipping in Australia, Singapore, and the Philippines, Baken has set its sights on conquering the rest of the world.

The Business Manual talked with Rachel Carrasco about how she came up with the concept of Baken, as well as her experience putting up her own business in Singapore and her advice for those who want to market their products globally.

The Early Beginnings of a Marketing Savant

Rachel Carrasco started out on the entrepreneurial path in a not-so-typical way. She took on several marketing jobs at a young age, halting her studies to focus on her career. “I was young, a little bit naive at that time but, you know, freedom was quite important to me. I moved out of my mom’s home at 18. I lived alone. I earned my own money, and that kind of just pushed me to stand up on my own two feet,” she shares.

The school of hard knocks taught her a lot of valuable life lessons, such as perseverance and the necessity of pivoting, because “There will always be challenges along the way, and things will never go as planned.”

Carrasco’s move to Singapore was an act of serendipity. She stumbled upon a job opening in the Southeast Asian country randomly, seeing it on her mother’s phone. Wanting to experience something new and different, she went ahead and applied for the job. However, she wasn’t expecting to be chosen for the role as it was for a bank, and she knew very little about the banking industry. 

Surprisingly, after two weeks, she got the job. 

Despite the strict emphasis of the Singaporean government on education with regards to employment passes, Carrasco was able to prove her skill set, with her professional experience overriding the educational requirements.

She got the employment pass, even with her family in Singapore telling her that they were doubtful she was going to get one. “Life always takes you to what is meant for you,” she remarks.

Initially, she was hesitant to make the big move to a new country. However, looking back, Carrasco says “Moving was the best decision I ever made.”

New Lessons in a New Home

A number of vital lessons were in store for Rachel Carrasco in Singapore, what she calls “the biggest adjustment period in my professional career.” Coming from a Philippine work setting where the atmosphere is a bit relaxed, she had to learn how to fit in a stiff, global environment in banking. She was now competing with not only Filipinos, but also Singaporeans and expats living in the country. She recounts that she started going to work dressed in a miniskirt, which was out of place in a trading floor full of male bankers. 

However, she looks back fondly at her time in the financial industry. She still talks with her old bosses, who tell her they are proud of her from starting out as someone with no idea how to fit in the corporate world, to where she is now. 

What did she learn in her first job in Singapore?

Discipline and organization, Carrasco says. She learned that to be a leader, you have to become competent in time management, people management, and training others, as compared to doing everything yourself.

Encountering Luxury, Rachel Carrasco’s First Love

After a stint in banking, Rachel Carrasco wanted to go back to marketing, creating campaigns and experiences for brands. She moved to an industry where she realized she really belonged: luxury.  

She started managing two brands of champagne: Dom Pérignon and Ruinart, and then moved up to take over the entire prestige champagnes portfolio for Moët Hennessy. 

It was a different type of marketing that Carrasco was used to, which was centered on doing PR and events. This time, as a brand manager, she needed to also look at the profitability of each of the brands— basically becoming the mini general manager of each brand.

After reading the financials over and over again, she gradually became more commercially savvy. As she puts it, “You have to understand the numbers, so you know what to offer your consumers and your trade.” 

The constructive criticism that she received from her bosses motivated her to upgrade her financial knowhow. “I’m just the type of person when told ‘you need to improve,’ I’ll focus on it and zoom into it,” she shares.

Next up on Rachel Carrasco’s career journey was a role in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) space, at Kimberly-Clark. She spent another two years at the American multinational corporation as a Regional Senior Brand Manager for FemCare (she admits that her typical lifespan in a corporate role is two years), before moving on to take a new challenge.

Was she consciously trying to build a versatile skill set by taking on different roles in different industries?

“Not at all,” she says, adding that it was more in the vein of trying different things and going with the flow. However, Carrasco knew deep down that she wanted to ultimately do something for herself. It was a constant discussion topic when she was with her colleagues.

Starting her own business was a daunting endeavor, especially since she was already in a position where she was secure and had a steady salary. But another fortuitous occurrence would move her out of her comfort zone once again.

Rache: Putting up a Marketing Consultancy

“When opportunities come, they just really come,” Rachel Carrasco remarks.

This would be an apt proverb for the next chapter in her professional life: putting up her own marketing consultancy firm.

After spending time in the FMCG industry, she wanted to return to luxury, specifically wines and spirits. In 2018, an old colleague shared with her an opportunity to become a Marketing Director for SEA for a new luxury business. However, the company was scaling down on foreign workers and rather than sponsor another employment pass, they suggested that she apply for permanent residency in the country—something that she was not ready to do at the time.

After several back-and-forth discussions, a Managing Director in the company proposed that she set up her own business, and that the company would onboard her new company. 

Initially, Carrasco thought it was a crazy idea, as she had a job and would be running a new company at the same time. But she set up the company anyway, named it Rache, and got a local person to be the Director and Marketing Executive. She did the planning during her free time at home, while keeping her job, and the local staff would execute her plans.

Then, her employer wanted to move her to a bigger role and asked if she wanted to stay on—essentially forcing her to choose between employment and Rache. The marketing consultancy was picking up at the time, making the choice an easier one.

Word spread about Carrasco’s marketing firm, and her first client was setting up luxury businesses globally, enabling the firm to expand. “I have to give credit to my clients because they opened up opportunities for me and they really believed in what I could do,” she says.

Carrasco became full-time at her marketing consultancy firm. Rache is small and takes on no more than five clients at a time, and most are on a retainer basis. The firm rarely pitches to clients, relying more on word-of-mouth endorsements to gain new business. Focusing on brand and experiential marketing, Carrasco describes Rache as more of an extension of the clients’ brand team.

Carrasco had now experienced a taste of creating her own marketing consultancy start-up. This experience, coupled with all of the roles she took on in the past, would culminate in something tasty, something indulgent, and something she could really call her own.

Baken: Pure Indulgence in Food Form

Baken started out as Carrasco’s passion project. On a trip to Cape Town, South Africa, she visited an all-bacon deli. As a bacon lover, she thought it would be fun to try to create a bacon snack. As she sat on the idea more and more, she realized that there was an opportunity in creating a crispy format meat snack, compared to the jerky and meat stick formats currently available in the market.

With that opportunity spotted, Carrasco founded Baken with a vision to become “the new generation of [meat] snacks.”

“When you think of meat snacks, I think people are unaware of the fact that it is actually number two—next to potato chips—in terms of sales globally,” Rachel Carrasco says. “After conducting several reviews of brands and products that exist within the category, the team decided on creating a meat snack that has a crunch of a chip. The biggest challenge? It was to ensure that the product could retain its crispiness and live in an ambient environment.”

With veganism becoming a noteworthy trend in the past years, where do meat snacks fit in the picture?

“I know there’s quite a huge trend around veganism and vegetarianism, but what everyone should also know is that there are still a lot of people that eat meat. And in that sense, what we want to offer them simply goes beyond a snack brand, rather a snacking experience that they can enjoy in many ways, at any time of the day. At Baken, we believe that snack time is incredibly sacred,” Carrasco outlines, adding that the target of Baken is to give consumers the “spirit of true indulgence.”

Baken prides itself in having products that are made with 100% real bacon and no artificial substitutes. Its Real Bacon Crisps product, which recently won at the Philippine Katha Awards for Food, is made with a premium, select cut of pork that meets a rigorous fat-to-meat ratio and precise baking temperature standards. Each strip is carefully monitored to be perfect in appearance, size, and taste. 

Carrasco states that it took about a year for the Crisps product to be ready to put in a bag, because they wanted to achieve the perfect crisp. 

Creating the spinoffs of bacon jam and bacon cookies were easier to trial and produce. “There are two ways when you create a brand or a product. You look at something that’s already existing in the market, and then you try to do it better than them, or you create something totally from scratch, which is what we’ve actually done with the crisps.” With the jam and cookies, Carrasco looked at the existing products in the market and asked, “How can we taste better? How can we look better? How can we provide the experience better?”

The most difficult part for Baken was the process of ensuring that the product output in the kitchen was the same output made in the plant and sold to the consumer. Carrasco says that successful kitchen trials for the product doesn’t necessarily translate 100% in the plant. “There’s a lot of forward-thinking that is required. You need to map your own acceptability rates, predict what could go wrong or what could go exactly right, and that’s where the difficulty is.”

However, Carrasco accepts all of these challenges and conquers them as they come. “Everything is an experience,” she states. “Right now, I can say with full confidence that, we, as a team, do so much better.”

Experiential Marketing and Brand Building

Carrasco’s background and focus on experiential marketing paved the way for her vision and strategy for Baken.“I think Baken is the culmination of all the experiences I’ve ever had, ” she shares. “My love for the F&B scene is there as well because you see that in the different types of applications that we do.”

“I think nowadays, product is just a souvenir to experience. People buy products because of the experience that it gives them, because it’s about how it makes them feel. And that, for me, is the most important thing,” she adds.

What’s Next for Baken

Currently, Baken is sold nationwide in retail and online in the Philippines, and solely online in Singapore and Australia. Yet, Carrasco has set her sights on the brand becoming a global one with distribution in all the major markets. 

“Meat snacks in general are much larger in the European and North American regions. When we started this brand, our goal has always been to distribute globally. It is a long path, but it’s a path we’re on now and we look forward to sharing where we will be next,” Carrasco says.

Yet, the Philippines remains Baken’s home. When asked where the brand is from, she proudly replies that it is a Filipino brand.  

‘You Have to Be Willing to Lose it All, to Gain More’

What insights can Carrasco give to entrepreneurs who are looking to export their food products globally and market internationally?

She says her background working overseas helped her in creating a product that looks and feels global. People often ask her if she bought the brand and brought it into the country.

Further, she stresses that, aside from the taste, the perception of the product is one of the most important considerations. “You need to be able to build that [perception] for the brand. And then of course, you’re going to have to look at how it fits in the different markets that you want to be in.”

With a colorful career journey to starting her own marketing consultancy and snack brand, what advice does Carrasco have for those starting their own businesses?

She muses on the risk and rewards of becoming an entrepreneur. “You have to be able to take the risk, because the larger the risk, often the greater the rewards. There are going to be a lot of hoops that you have to go through. Your time and your money—you have to be willing to lose it all.”

“And at the same time, you may gain more than what you actually put in. And I think that is the most important thing to remember as an entrepreneur because unfortunately, there will always be pitfalls. Things happen a lot, and you’ll have to be adaptable, and you’ll have to change and move and know when to take a step back.”

Her final piece of advice is, “You need to know when to push forward and, at some point, you’ll also need to know when you have to exit.”

With her marketing genius, resilience, and versatility, Rachel Carrasco is definitely pushing forward to conquer the world of meat snacks with Baken. 

Text ROCKY TEODORO

Photography EXCEL PANLAQUE of KLIQ INC.

Videography JR RAMIREZ of KLIQ INC.

Art Direction ANDREA SANGCO

Sittings Editor RJ LEDESMA

Makeup Artist EFFIE IÑIGO

Hair Stylist JAN EDROSOLAN

Stylist LEANNE LEDESMA

Stylist Assistant CLAIRE FERNANDO

Shoot Coordination TONI MENDOZA

Shot on Location AGC POWER HOLDINGS CORP.