Clarin´s Top 10 - Sugar & Spice Makes the List

Not a bad way to end the year or start a new one. Clarin, Argentina´s largest newspaper, included us in their round-up of entrepreneurs with the most innovative ideas. For some reason, the online article is not complete so you would have to read the actual paper or you can click on the picture above if you can read Spanish.

Another expat (this one from the UK) was also mentioned. His company is 0800-Vino and it is a wine delivery service that promises to have your order delivered to your home within the hour.

Clarin chose among all the companies that they interviewed during the year. This was a complete surprise to me, and I found out about it after a friend of mine wrote to me congratulating me on the article. Thanks Tom!

The article is in Spanish, so what follows is my own personal translation of our part of the article.

Frank Almeida said that he came to this country out of love. He arrived in 1999 with his then girlfriend, now wife, but he soon started to miss some things. "I could not find cookies, like I knew cookies". To satisfy his nostalgia, his wife started baking out of their home. Today they are the owners of Sugar & Spice, a brand of gourmet cookies that invoiced $1,500,000 pesos in 2007.

We first "baked them at home and sold them to local bars and cafés of Palermo Viejo". Later they rented a space, bought an oven and designed their packaging. They managed to sell to Falabella (multinational departement store chain) and that is how they started their relationships with large clients. They also obtained angel investment to the tune of one million dollars. With that money they bought a factory with 800 sq meters of space. Today you can find their products in Jumbo, Disco, Libertad and La Anonima.

Of course we can also be found in many small gourmet shops, cafés, wine shops, cheese shops, video stores, chocolate shops, etc throughout the country from Tierra del Fuego to Misiones.