A migrant from Manila, Renato Dychangco Sr. was initially engaged in the lumber business when he observed a strong demand for coffins when wakes were mostly held in residences. This inspired him to enter the business when interest among Chinese families was on the rise.
The family’s funerary business started with his mother, Julita, who operated Punerarya Popular in Laguna Province. For some reason, interest in what is a ‘macabre’ business, did not click with her 10 children, except Renato Sr. who restarted it in another region.
In 1948, he traveled to Cebu to get a feel of the place. Two years later, he opened the country’s first-ever funeral home enterprise, the Cosmopolitan Memorial Parlor (now Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes, CFH), at Junquera Street, Cebu City, then that city’s red-light district.
The use of ‘cosmopolitan’ is not a chance but an anticipation given the term fits the different people the funeral home services. With foresight, he opened branches in Mindanao and, decades later, in Metro Manila under the handle of his son and namesake, and the third-generation descendants of the Dychangco family.
The first memorial chapel outside Cebu was opened in 1960 in a two-story building at corner Leon Ma. Guerrero and Francisco Villa-Abrille Streets, Davao City, inside the 44-hectare Chinatown. This is the enterprise’s first branch outside Cebu and the first in Mindanao.
Just a stone’s throw from the city’s main bus terminal, a few hundred meters away from the defunct International Harvardian University, and a walking distance to Ateneo de Davao, Davao Chong Hua High School (the city’s first Chinese institute), San Pedro Hospital, Holy Cross of Davao, Santa Ana Church, and the now deserted Taiwanese consulate, the funeral parlor’s chapel and morgue were situated on the ground floor. In the 1990s, it was torched to the ground.
Historically, CFH is the country’s first memorial chapel to enter franchising and possibly the world. In 2007, the franchise cost for a CFH branch ranged from P10 million to P30 million and required a space of no less than 1,500 square meters. If operated in a leased property, it should be under contract for a minimum of eight to 10 years.
CFH is also the first Filipino funeral home accepted by the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) and the Cremation Association of North America (CANA), and is allied with Batesville Casket Company, Inc., an American firm known for making caskets, urns, and keepsakes, and Dodge Chemicals, an industrial chemical company based in Maryland, USA.
In November 2002, another Cosmopolitan chapel was opened–the most ambitious Mindanao project—at the junction of J. Camus and Jose Abad Santos Streets, Davao City. Known as the Camus branch, the parlor offers amenities and facilities that upend in terms of luxury many of Manila’s popular and upstate funeral homes.
Calling itself “the specialists in family care and service,” CHF introduces itself as tendering “world-class comfort and care,” adhering to “a philosophy of respect and kindness,” and bringing “leading edge care with kindness, courtesy, and compassion.”
Years later, the funeral chain expanded by opening two more branches in Davao region. It acquired the old Patalinghug Funeral Homes at Cabaguio Street, in Davao City, and another branch at No. 54 National Highway, Visayan Village, Tagum City.
Competing with Cosmopolitan in the 1990s was the Toril-based Villa Funeral Homes, through a branch found along Santa Ana Avenue, beside the defunct Mason Bowling Lanes. Later, Angel Funeral Homes, owned by the Brillantes family, opened along Florentino Torres Street, Davao City, and has since opened branches as far as Santa Barbara, Iloilo City.
