Jennifer Estacio - Flipp Family

Jennifer Estacio was inspired to start Flipp Family as a way to engage her children in their Filipino culture. A beautiful resource to the community, Flipp Family is a “family friendly community educating about the Filipino culture through food and family friendly activities.” Flipp Family hosted many in person events like the food centered Silog Time and The Filipino Instant Pot Cookbook Family Cooking Demo and Book Signing, and seamlessly shifted to online classes during the pandemic. That pivot helped keep kids connected to their culture and community during quarantine. Flipp Family also offers specialty boxes like the Kakanin Fun Box which lets you create your own Puto dessert at home. Food is very much a central theme in Jennifer’s life and Flipp Family because, “food tells us a lot about our culture. Filipino food tastes so homey and comforting. To me, just a taste alone shows a lot about a culture. Food and hospitality is ingrained in me. If you go to a party at my parents house, they cook all the food and it’s like a party every weekend and being able to experience that is special.” Jennifer has also partnered up to start Mango Studios, a membership site that creates programs and activities that highlight different cultures around the world. There is plenty on the horizon for Jennifer and Flipp Family. Look out for Filipino cooking classes, motherhood and business resources, and more!

Flipp Family
@flippfamily

What is the inspiration behind Flipp Family and why did you start it?
Now that I have my own kids, I want to be able to share the Filipino culture in a fun and easy way so they can understand it. My kids are my inspiration. I watch them engage with different activities: cooking, art, music. For example, my husband would practice the rondalla and my oldest son just really engaged with music, the kulintang, and gongs. Also, I've been involved with the Filipino Community for many many years, since college, so being able to be a resource for families now that I'm a parent is important. I feel like there's not enough groups or organizations doing things that are more towards kids just coming from college and took a lot of Asian American Studies classes that were more analytical and I don't want it to be that way, so I gear my work towards kids. The most important part of Flipp Family is food. You can learn so much about one’s culture through food and I incorporate food in anyway possible.

How important is building community for our kids?
It is so important. I mean it's hard when I haven't been able to create in person events, so I committed to online classes which is my way of connecting to the community and to our followers. We’ve pivoted to online classes and connecting via Zoom. And now we are recognizing some of the same kids that are coming on and they're talking to each other. So I think we'll be able to do events again, and create a hybrid model.

What are some of your favorite activities to do with kids?
One of our big things are our activity boxes that involve cooking. Paxton likes to help me in the kitchen so we've been doing a lot of cooking. We have recipes where kids can help, measure things and follow directions so there's so much more to cooking that we've been able to incorporate classes where kids can get a box full of ingredients that are non-perishable and follow along with us in our class.

Can you share more about Mangos Studios, how it came about and its impact and connecting families virtually during the pandemic?
Flipp Family has had the membership of where parents can opt-in on a monthly basis or annual basis, where we have classes every month in addition to a digital activity book. One of the founding members wanted to do something similar but I was like why don't we collaborate and take the membership into the next level because I'm a one-woman show, so we transition our membership into Mangos Studio. We not only highlight the Filipino culture, but many other cultures and put different inspirations behind it. Our main focus will not only be the Philippines but also Southeast Asia, Europe, Australia, etc-- just so we can give kids a chance to learn about diversity and not just the Filipino culture. What's also included is subscription boxes that will highlight different cultures that will include materials for all the activities all in one box. We want families to be inspired and be creative while exploring a new culture. One that we are working on right now, will be highlighting Southeast Asia because of the movie that came out inspired by that region, and I don't want to give it away. In addition, we will have various programs like a language program where for example will highlight languages Another is going to learn about food and the different noodles of each country. So it’s not only Filipino food like pancit but also maybe Japan with udon and Italy with spaghetti. We want to incorporate different cultures so that kids can get exposed to that, and realize learning their culture is important and so is diversity.

The Filipino Instant Pot Cookbook Family Cooking Demo and Book Signing at Romeo Chocolate.
Photo by JJ Emil Photography

How did you develop the boxes (kindness box, kakanin box)?
I had some ideas of who different small business I wanted to collaborate with. For the kindness box I collaborated with small business owners like Bel Canto Books and purchased a kindness book through her so we can also support her business. Then the S'mores Kit was a local baker who created her own s'mores-- like chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers. We like to support small businesses with the boxes. And I wanted to try out and see if people are interested with cooking and include ingredients, and I was trying to figure out how to do kind Hello Fresh Filipino style. But knowing my capacity and all the food regulations, I can’t ship out chicken or perishable food, so I'm thinking of what's non-perishable that's easy and fun for kids to do. My idea for the kakanin box was good since it included ingredients like coconut milk and ube extract, rice flour, and the most important is like the molds. I was able to source the molds. I see the kakanin box continuing to grow and include other desserts like bilo bilo, biko or bibingka. What’s great about these boxes is that you can join our online classes and you get all of the ingredients in one box, rather than try to figure out where to get everything.

What is important about how our food connects us to culture?
This is so important because food tells us a lot about our culture. Filipino food tastes so homey and comforting. To me, just a taste alone shows a lot about a culture. Food and hospitality is ingrained in me. If you go to a party at my parents house, they cook all the food and it’s like a party every weekend and being able to experience that is special. When I have one friend come over, I'm always like, “Okay, what are we going to feed them?” That’s the first thing that comes to my head, it just shows how our Filipino culture is hospitable, and just a taste of the flavor shares how diverse our culture is and how different cultures have influenced the Filipino cuisine.

What are you working on, are excited about, what's coming up for you?
I want to launch Filipino cooking class programs for parents. Easy classes with meal prepping ideas and teaching parents how to cook the dishes. Besides Filipino culture, I’m passionate about motherhood and business so I want to share a course for working moms that think they can also do their passions and make it into a business. That's the other other side of Flipp Family that I'm excited about and what's to come this year. I see Flipp Family kind of just evolving a lot this year besides just sharing Filipino culture gearing it towards kids, I also want to make sure I share a lot about my motherhood, interests and passions, and being a how to share that with other mothers and relate to them in that way so that's awesome.

Photos courtesy of Jennifer Estacio
Profile photo by JJ Emil Photography