Jan Miranda wasn’t meant to be a businessman.
If life had gone according to plan, he’d probably be in a laboratory today. After being accepted into Ateneo Med and later earning an opportunity to pursue a master’s degree in epidemiology at the University of Glasgow, it was clear that science wasn’t simply an interest but the future he had imagined for himself.
Instead, he runs one of BGC’s most beloved bakeries.
The contrast makes for an interesting conversation. Jan speaks about bread the way other people speak about research projects. He talks about formulations, consistency, shelf life, and the countless rounds of testing that happen before a product ever reaches a customer. When he explains why one dough behaves differently from another or why a recipe needs to be adjusted by a few grams, the scientist quickly reveals himself.
“Baking is very much a science,” he says. “That perspective has helped me approach the business with great knowledge and creativity.”
But the longer we talk, the less this feels like a story about bread.
Again and again, conversations about products turn into conversations about people. Questions about expansion become stories about jobs. Discussions about suppliers become stories about relationships. Before long, it’s clear that understanding Jan means understanding the world he grew up in.
Growing Up Around Service
Both of Jan’s parents have spent more than four decades working in public health and humanitarian aid. His mother was involved in disaster response during the Baguio earthquake and spent years investigating food poisoning cases. His father worked on major public health initiatives, from disaster response efforts to vaccine programs.
For Jan, these weren’t impressive stories he heard as an adult. They formed the backdrop of his childhood. He joined research trips and community projects, watching his parents devote themselves to work that rarely came with recognition but always came with purpose.
“I’m very lucky to have my parents as my inspiration,” he says. “That’s where we find fulfillment. Doing humanitarian work.”
Even today, both continue working well into their sixties.
“They never stop,” Jan says with a laugh. “They’ve been doing it since they were 20.”
The influence is easy to spot.
As we continue talking, Jan seldom measures success in the language most entrepreneurs use. He talks about opportunities created rather than opportunities seized. He remembers suppliers before sales figures and employees before expansion plans. It’s less a business philosophy than a worldview he seems to have absorbed long before he ever stepped inside a bakery.
Deliveries After Class
Ironically, business wasn’t supposed to be part of his story.
His family had once owned a music school and a pizza place, but those ventures eventually closed. Jan’s attention shifted almost entirely toward science and engineering.
“That was really my bread and butter,” he says.
While he was planning a future in medicine and research, a small bakery was slowly taking shape closer to home. His sister Jin had started the business alongside her friend and co-founder, Yumiko. At first, Jan’s role was simple. He made deliveries, helped where he could, and worked around his class schedule.
“It started as a simple way to support the family,” he says. “But it gradually became something more meaningful.”
As the bakery grew, so did his responsibilities. There were days when he would leave a university lecture and head straight to the store, staying until closing before repeating the routine the next morning. The work slowly stopped feeling like helping out and started feeling like something he genuinely wanted to build.
His scientific background also found an unexpected home there.
While Jin focused on creativity and flavor, Jan became fascinated by food chemistry. Why did one recipe succeed while another failed? Why did texture change? How could shelf life be improved without compromising quality?
“I’m not a baker by any means,” he says. “But I’m proficient in food chemistry.”
He smiles when describing how they still complement each other today.
“Sometimes I can’t think of the creative side, so I need her. Sometimes she doesn’t understand why something happened, so she needs me.”
Their different ways of thinking have become one of the bakery’s greatest strengths.
Taking a Chance on BGC
What began as a home-based operation eventually expanded into physical stores, including the BGC branch that introduced Pan-onymous to a much wider audience.
The timing could hardly have been more uncertain.
The opportunity emerged during the pandemic, when offices were largely empty and foot traffic was unpredictable. Opening a bakery under those circumstances would have made many people think twice.
Jan certainly did.
“I stayed at the place,” he recalls. “I went there a few times a week just to feel it out.”
He wanted to understand the neighborhood before committing. He watched people. He imagined what daily life there might look like after the pandemic. He wasn’t simply evaluating a location. He was trying to understand whether the bakery belonged there.
Eventually, he decided it did.
Looking back, he rarely talks about the risk itself. Instead, he talks about what opening the branch made possible.
“Our prime motivation for building BGC was to make opportunities,” he says. “It was really for people to have jobs.”
That idea continues to shape the business today. Produce is sourced directly from local farmers whenever possible. Vegetables come from places like Baguio, Batangas, and Nueva Ecija. Some fillings come from small home-based producers who have grown alongside the bakery.
Even pricing reflects that philosophy.
“We charge as low as our rent can support.”
Asked what he pays himself, Jan shrugs.
“I just give myself a livable enough salary. Not a lot. Just so I can do everyday life.”
He says it without trying to make a point. It’s simply how he thinks.
By the end of our conversation, it becomes apparent that he doesn’t really see Pan-onymous as a business existing on its own. He sees an ecosystem: customers, staff, farmers, suppliers, neighbors, and families whose stories intersect every day.
And somehow, somewhere along the way, the scientist who thought he’d spend his life studying public health found another way to build a community.
Bread, Through a Chemist’s Eyes
If Jan’s scientific background explains how he approaches the bakery, it also explains why he rarely rushes into anything.
One story captures that better than any résumé ever could.
When Mitsukoshi approached Pan-onymous about carrying its products, the opportunity was obvious. For many small businesses, the chance to partner with one of the country’s premier Japanese retail destinations would have been an immediate yes.
Jan’s reaction was different.
“We really told them that we don’t know anything,” he recalls with a laugh. “We don’t know if our breads are good enough to last the storage of the supermarket.”
It wasn’t false modesty. He genuinely wanted to know whether the products could withstand a completely different environment from the bakery where they were made fresh every day.
Instead of rushing to announce a partnership, the team spent months testing products, studying shelf life, making adjustments, and trying again.
“A lot of food businesses would just do it,” he says. “But I really wanted to be careful.”
Listening to him describe the process, it’s easy to imagine the career he almost had. He talks about experimentation rather than intuition, about variables rather than trends. Every product is something to be understood before it is something to be sold.
Perhaps that’s why Pan-onymous never feels manufactured, despite its growth. The business still carries the mindset of people who are constantly learning.
Behind the Counter
For all the conversations about recipes and research, the place where Jan seems happiest isn’t in the kitchen.
It’s behind the cashier counter.
“I still stand behind the cashier counter and live for the everyday interactions,” he says. “There’s something very special about being able to build a brand that becomes a stable part of their everyday lives.”
The statement sounds simple until he begins telling stories.
He remembers Japanese customers who make Pan-onymous one of their last stops before heading to the airport. Some visit every time they return to Manila. Others have become such familiar faces that saying goodbye feels less like a transaction and more like seeing off friends.
Then there are the children.
Jan recalls babies eating their first solid food at the bakery, only to return years later a little taller, a little louder, and still asking for the same bread. Parents who once walked in carrying toddlers now arrive with school-age kids who already know exactly what they want from the display case.
Those are the memories that stay with him.
He doesn’t recount opening dates or sales milestones with the same enthusiasm. Instead, he talks about everyday moments that most people would probably overlook: conversations while waiting in line, regular customers who no longer need to order because the staff already knows their favorites, and familiar faces who disappear for months before suddenly returning as though no time has passed.
“It’s really that irreplaceable feeling that you can make people happy,” he says. “Not just customers, but also your staff.”
That last part matters to him.
Throughout our conversation, he mentions employees with genuine affection and talks about opportunities more than performance. He speaks about suppliers and farmers not as vendors but as partners whose livelihoods are connected to the bakery’s own story. Success, in his view, seems to become more meaningful the more people get to share in it.
Finding Fulfillment
At 26, Jan oversees a growing business, helps develop new concepts, and still contributes to public health projects whenever time allows. The scientist he once imagined becoming never entirely disappeared. He simply found a different place to apply his curiosity.
“I could easily have gone somewhere else,” he says. “Go up the chain. But that’s not where I find satisfaction and fulfillment in life.”
For someone his age, it’s a remarkably settled perspective.
Pan-onymous will almost certainly continue to grow. There will be new products to develop, new collaborations to pursue, and new customers discovering the bakery for the first time. Those milestones will come and go.
The stories Jan chooses to tell, however, are different ones.
They’re about the employee who found an opportunity, the farmer whose produce ends up on the shelves, the Japanese family that visits before every flight home, the child who grew up eating the bakery’s bread, and the conversations that happen across a cashier counter on an otherwise ordinary afternoon.
Perhaps that’s why this story never really became about a scientist who accidentally entered business.
It’s about someone who found that fulfillment can take many forms. Sometimes it looks like a career in medicine. Sometimes it looks like humanitarian work. And sometimes, it looks like standing behind the counter of a neighborhood bakery, greeting familiar faces and watching a community quietly grow, one loaf at a time.
