The Highlands Café in the Sky at Barangay Lipit Tomeeng here is the newest tourist attraction in Pangasinan as it offers scenic, instagrammable view, and scrumptious food while employing college students here.

The café, which was opened on Nov. 14, is now a hit with an average of over 220 guests daily including Pangasinense vloggers as the owners used social media to promote the latest attraction here.

Millennial vlogger and online seller Angeline Asaytono Gali, 24, a native of Barangay Lipit Tomeeng, together with her friend and classmate, Harold Keith Recede, thought of putting up a café in the mountainous area of the town with the bikers or cyclists as their target market.

“The lot, which was previously owned by my brother, is just adjacent to the biker’s den. Many bikers go there as they enjoy the trail leading to the Tatlong Bundok mountain ranges at the neighboring Barangay Inmalog Sur, some 20 to 30 minutes away from our café,” she said in an interview Monday.

However, the café trended online and more tourists mostly from the different parts of the province come to enjoy the view of the lowlands in the morning or the magnificent sunset at dusk while sipping their coffee and eating their meals at the tables and chairs in the open area or under nipa roofs.

Some parts of the café, Gali said, were Bali Indonesia-inspired.

Most of the furniture and structures are made of bamboo and wood.

Gali said they were overwhelmed by the patronage their café is getting but also thankful as they were able to hire more college students to work for them.

The café offers coffee (hot and iced), milk teas, juice drinks, and meals such as buffalo wings, and different kinds of tapsilog.

Gali said their barista, Reggie, was a former overseas Filipino worker in Saudi Arabia.

“We added one more bartender, one assistant cook, and two servers to our original manpower. We wanted to do two shifts for our working-student employees here,” she said.

She added that the working students are taking up Hotel and Management Restaurant courses in their tertiary education.

“They are from this barangay and we wanted to help them by providing employment even for just on a part-time basis,” she said.

Most of the people in the barangay are into agriculture.

Gali said they make sure that health protocols are being followed such as the ‘no face mask, no face shield, no entrance’ policy, physical distancing, temperature check, and listing of guests for possible contact tracing. (PNA)