Mercato Centrale and the Entrepreneurial Operating System: A love story
Every entrepreneur reaches a point where they need help. As founders take on additional roles in the company, as the business grows, or as the leadership team expands — often to family relations — running the ship can become complicated — frustrating even. The company’s mission may become muddled. Founders might pursue different goals. Or the original vision may be lost even as metrics like profitability show positive growth. For companies experiencing these common problems, the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) can be heaven-sent.
For my own business, Mercato Centrale, the EOS has been instrumental in re-focusing the business to become an even better version of what it has been in the past.
Today’s column traces my own entrepreneurial journey alongside Vanessa Pastor-Ledesma, co-founder of Mercato Centrale, the co-founder of my children, and the co-CEO in my marriage. This is my most personal column and interview to date as it details the challenges and solutions, as well as triumphs and tribulations Vanessa and I have faced, and I believe many entrepreneurs will relate — especially if they work with their spouse or with their family. Read to the end to find out how EOS can be transformative for your business.
FOUNDING AND EVOLUTION
Before delving into EOS, let me step aside and let Vanessa share the story of Mercato’s founding and the situation we found ourselves in many years later.
You can say Mercato was born out of love. Vanessa explains, “We were on our honeymoon in Florence, Italy, when we chanced upon the original Mercato Centrale. And it was very much community-based, and there was a lot of taste tests, and there was a lot of different types of food. And I remember turning to RJ and saying, ‘Why don’t we do something like this in the Philippines?’”
Fast forward to 2026, and Mercato Centrale has grown and evolved. “It started out as a food market, similar to several food markets that we see in the metro,” Vanessa says, “but it evolved into a business incubator, particularly a food business incubator… We help discover and scale small food entrepreneurs. And that’s our heart and soul.”
Among Mercato’s “success stories” are food establishments such as Gino’s Pizzeria, Tokyo Tempura, Manang’s Chicken, Mochiko, and Thai Mango, all of which have become very popular.
It was also around this time that running the business became complicated. Yes, we were profitable. Yes, we were growing. But could the business become more? Were we pursuing the right strategy? Did we have the right people on our team? It was then that we reached out to Haraya Gust, an implementer of EOS whom I had interviewed previously on the RJ Ledesma Podcast. And then everything changed…
WHAT IS THE EOS?
Haraya Gust is an EOS implementer and the master franchise holder of EOS in the Philippines. She explains what the Entrepreneurial Operating System is by saying, “EOS is a complete set of concepts and very practical tools that have been around for a hundred years.” Founded by Gino Wickman, it “helps entrepreneurs and the teams around them get aligned with their vision, with tools to execute their vision and the strategy and also tools to become healthy and more functional and more cohesive as a team.”
In very human terms, Ms. Gust explains further, saying, “We come into [entrepreneurial companies] as humans with a lot of hope and a lot of ambition, and we’re helping each other. And then before we know it, we’re starting to see things differently. And while we still want the same thing, we start to put in more and more of our individual selves into that business.
“Without the words and without the framework to clarify what it is that we’re doing, it’s easy [to get lost]. And I’ve seen it, and it’s happened to me as well, not just between couples, but among family members, which is a lot of the companies that I work with. And those are challenges.”
FOUNDERS’ DYNAMICS
For Vanessa and I — and Mercato — the EOS was heaven-sent. Other founders who are married couples may find this familiar: our personal lives bleed into our business lives, and then our business lives bleed back in a never-ending cycle. And it causes a lot of tension in the marriage, which goes to business, which goes back to the marriage.
One of Vanessa’s biggest concerns was with decision making. She said, “One of the things is that RJ, because he’s exposed to so many people and so many things and so many ideas, there’s so many things that he wants to do for the company. Like on a Monday, for example, he wants to put up an indoor food market. And on a Tuesday, he wants to put up an app… It came to the point where we didn’t know which direction we were going, or I didn’t know which [task] to do first.”
As founders, each of us also took on additional roles as the business grew. I handled marketing and business development while Vanessa took on finance and operations. And by doing so, we both lost touch with who was the visionary in the company as well as who ultimately made the decisions.
Then Aya Gust came into our lives, with EOS tools and whole-day sessions, and they were nothing short of life-changing. She helped us align our goals for the company and achieve clarity.
“I think what [EOS] does first is it helps the players in the game, family members, and even the employees, just step out of the business and look at the business from an outsider’s perspective. When we’re in the weeds and we’re just solving day-to-day problems, we’re just really doing our best. It’s hard to see what that dynamic looks like.”
Among Ms. Gust and EOS’ vast arsenal of tools are the accountability chart, meeting pulse, a vision traction organizer, and one golden session where you pretend that everyone on the leadership team is fired and you then rebuild the team with the right person in the right seat.
It was there that I realized that my role in Mercato was not as head of marketing or business development, or even in the day-to-day work. My role is more strategic.
Vanessa, likewise, realized that she had built a strong team who would benefit more from her letting go of operations. She says, “They’re not able to be the leaders that they should be. And so by staying, not only will the company, I feel, not grow, but the people in the leadership seats will not grow. I really had to go, and just stay in the owner’s box.”
These realizations are not easy to make for founders who always want control of every aspect of the business, but they ultimately made Mercato a stronger company with prospects I am very excited for.
Ultimately, the change in Mercato can be summarized by the Hedgehog principle in the book Good to Great — being great at the one thing we’re good at. As Ms. Gust said, “We call it our core focus so that all of our products, our energy, the people that we hire, everything we do is focused on that. And so we go farther as a business, we get to our goals faster, and we’re able to take out all the noise, all the distractions.”
RJ Ledesma (www.rjledesma.com) is a Hall of Fame Awardee for Best Male Host at the Aliw Awards, a multi-awarded serial entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and business mentor, podcaster, an Honorary Consul, and editor-in-chief of The Business Manual. Mr. Ledesma can be found on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. The RJ Ledesma Podcast is available on Facebook, Spotify, Google and Apple Podcasts. Are there entrepreneurs you want Mr. Ledesma to interview? Let him know at ledesma.rj@gmail.com.
