'Bakpia' stands out as local snack favorite
Israr Ardiansyah, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta
Anytime a friend or relative returns from Yogyakarta, he or she usually brings a box of Bakpia Pathuk, the city's most popular traditional snack, as a gift.
It's not hard to find. When passing through Yogyakarta's touristed streets, local residents -- from sidewalk traders to pedicab drivers -- will happily offer to take you to buy this round-shaped delicacy.
The history of bakpia, which originates from the Chinese word bak (or pork) and pia (meaning cookie), starts at the 500-meter- long street, Jl. Aipda K.S. Tubun -- better known as Jl. Pathuk, a small street about 100 meters west of Jl. Malioboro.
The location becomes the mang beans-filled snack's most frequently used name, Bakpia Pathuk.
The owner of one especially popular bakpia business, known as Bakpia 75, Yenny Susanto, (better known as Bu, or Mrs. Yenny,) said that the bakpia business has gone through a long evolutionary process to become what it is today.
Once upon a time, the snack used pork as its filling, the 59- year-old woman said.
However, "since there were many Muslims shopping here, we changed its ingredients," to conform to the dietary needs of followers of Islam, who shun pork, Yenny said.
Instead, her business has experimented with other types of fillings, including chocolate and cheese. But in the end, "our customers preferred the mang beans," she said.
The tradition of bakpia making was begun by a group of Indonesians of Chinese descent living in Jl. Pathuk, who had been making the traditional Chinese pork-filled snack for their own consumption.
The late Liem Bok Sing, Yenny's mother-in-law, started the mung bean-filled bakpia business in 1948 in her 150-square-meter home under the brand name of Bakpia 75, an allusion to the number of her street address.
Soon after, another company started up under its own brand name of Bakpia 38.
Until the early 90s, both companies -- Bakpia 75 and Bakpia 38 -- dominated the business.
Competition grew fierce at the beginning of the 1990s, however, when Bakpia 75 chef Sonder quit to set up his own bakpia-making classes.
He taught people from Pathuk and surrounding areas like Suryotarunan, Ngadiwinatan, Purwodiningratan, Mertolulutan, and Ngampilan. He also offered to give lessons in bakpia-making to people from other faraway places.
One bakpia maker, Titi Lestari, better known as Tari, recalled that Sonder disclosed all the bakpia secrets at a cheap price.
"Regardless the number of participants, only paid Rp 25,000 in 1991 to attend his class. It was very cheap compared with what we could earn later with our newfound knowledge," the 35-year-old woman said.
Tari put her knowledge to use by opening her own bakpia business when she moved to neighboring town of Klaten in 1996.
"I can earn a net profit up to Rp 20,000 per day from selling bakpia," she said. For her, it was a pleasant surprise, since she lives less than 40 kilometers east of Yogyakarta.
These days, Jl. Pathuk itself is always crowded with hungry people looking for the snack -- especially on weekends.
At the Hyatt Regency in Yogyakarta, Public Relations Manager Atik Wildan discovered that Bakpia Pathuk met her taste.
"I eat many kinds of bakpia, like those from East Java, but I find bakpia from Pathuk more crunchy and tasty, especially when it's fresh from the oven," she said.
Hundreds of bakpia makers from all over Yogyakarta prefer to use numbers for their brand names, like Bakpia 25, 477 or 97, for instance.
According to Darajat, the village chief of Ngampilan where Jl. Pathuk is located, some 150 families of the village's 13,717 residents run bakpia businesses.
Each business, in turn, employs up to 20 workers.
Bakpia is now filled with mang beans, and some even carry a Halal certificate (according to Muslim dietary requirements) from the Indonesian Council of Ulemas (MUI).
To improve their sales, most bakpia makers give a 20 percent commission to local guides, pedicab or taxi drivers that bring customers to their businesses.
One taxi driver, Somad, said that one bakpia trader even gave him Rp 4,000 for every purchase of Rp 10,000 by his passengers.
Tough competition, however, has not made any long time players like Yenny desperate.
Yenny said that her business is not affected by tougher competition stemming from the emergence of more players in the area.
"We have our own loyal customers. I believe it's a lucky way to earn a living -- not just for myself, but everyone," she said.
She said that doesn't even harbor a grudge against Sonder who, after working for her from 1995 to 1998, left to teach others the bakpia's secret recipe.