Ex-presso coffee cart run by the Philippine Jesuit Prison Service puts formerly incarcerated Filipinos behind the counter, and the question is what an ordinary purchase can carry.
Hiring someone with a prison record is a big ask for many employers. Buying a coffee from one is a much smaller ask. The Ex-Preso coffee cart sits in the space between the two, and it does so in public.
The cart belongs to the Philippine Jesuit Prison Service Foundation (PJPS), a nonprofit established in 1996 that works with inmates and the Bureau of Corrections in Muntinlupa. Its baristas are Persons Restored of Liberty (PRLs), the foundation’s term for people who have left prison. The cart goes to events, serves coffee, and lets a short conversation happen across the counter.
Few reintegration programs face the public
An Inquirer columnist wrote that there are next to no reintegration programs in the country, and that PJPS has worked for decades to help former prisoners return to a world that has changed. The coffee format has precedent abroad. YES! Magazine reports barista training for inmates at Rikers Island in New York, and The Fringe Coffee House in Ohio, run by a couple who were both formerly convicted. Coffee fits because it is a teachable skill with a customer-facing job attached.
The Ex-Preso coffee cart started as a donation
When the PJPS formation house opened on July 2, eight PRLs entered the program. A week later, someone donated a food cart. Fr. Jun-G Bargayo Jr., SJ, the foundation’s executive director, thought of coffee, and with help from Fr. Albert Garong, SSP, they acquired a machine.
A friend supplied the name, which refers to former prisoners without softening it. PJPS’s own materials use the formal term PRL. The cart does not. The name sits on the banner for every customer to read.
The Ex-Preso coffee cart was formally launched during the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola in July 2025. It served coffee at the Ateneo during that feast, and Ex-Preso members have also joined small discussion circles with Ateneo students, according to the same Inquirer column.
Formation sits behind the counter
The program starts with about three months of formation, during which PRLs live in BaLaya ni Lolo Kiko, the foundation’s transitional home. The Ex-Preso coffee cart is where that formation meets the public. PJPS is open that the program is not built for profit: Aleteia’s coverage describes it as centered on formation, not financial gain.
The commercial logic is partly visible
Three channels are visible. Coffee is sold at events. Catering bookings come through the cart’s Instagram account, @thepjps.ex.preso. Donations come through a QR code on the cart.
What the coverage does not show is pricing, revenue, or how much of the cart’s costs these channels cover. That gap matters because the cart started with donated equipment and friends who helped train the baristas, so it is hard to say from the outside what a cup costs to serve. Any reading of the Ex-Preso coffee cart as a coffee business should wait for numbers.
Positioning rests on the person behind the counter
Metro Manila does not lack coffee carts, and a cart with a good machine is easy to copy. What the Ex-Preso coffee cart offers that others cannot is the institution behind it and the person handing over the cup. Fr. Bargayo describes it as a mobile venue that goes where a conversation might happen. The audience is whoever is at the event, and distribution runs through bookings and appearances, not a fixed address.
Visibility is part of what the customer buys
The Ex-Preso coffee cart asks its baristas to be seen. One barista told Aleteia he wore a mask at first, afraid customers would recognize him, and another said his confidence grew on the job. For the customer, the ask is small: buy a drink and look at who is making it. Published accounts so far come from the baristas themselves, and none of the coverage reviewed includes independent data on employment or reoffending.
PJPS says the aim is for each barista to co-own a cart one day. The coverage so far documents the first step, which is a counter, a drink, and a customer willing to talk. The Ex-Preso coffee cart has no published numbers yet on the second step, which is ownership.
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