Carrefour Productos del Mundo

Carrefour Salguero is having a promotion for the whole month of May and they dedicated a whole page of their catalog to us. They also had a great display at the front of the store.

On the weekends we are sampling the cookies as well at their Salguero location.

Stop by and get your favorite cookies at a discount. You can click on the image above for a larger view.

Villa 31 (part 1)

Sugar & Spice will be closed tomorrow because we are all going to the Villa 31. What is the Villa 31 you might ask?

Well, it is one of the city slums, and there are estimates of it having around 25,000 people living within it.

So why would we be going there?

We are going with Fundación Leer to build a reading corner for a school. I have asked a local expat photographer (very talented I might add) Cate Kelly to come with us.

This is the first time I get my employees involved in creating a reading corner with Fundación Leer.

In part two I hope to write about our experience and show you some wonderful pictures of a place not many of us ever get to see, and of experiences that hopefully more and more people will be interested in living themselves.

I invite you to come back to witness what happens.

Goals

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
--Arnold Toynbee

Every month I get together with several other volunteers under the banner of Democrats Abroad Argentina. This is my first dabbling in politics and at first it seemed kind of frustrating. I am so used to a different speed; I am used to making decisions and running with them on the spot. This has been more like watching paint dry, and finally it is starting to look like we are building some momentum.

I approached a fellow expat and local business leader Martin Frankel. This guy is everywhere and his efforts seem to be paying off. He has been holding networking events, meetings for small business owners; he is a partner in Sugar Bar, and now he has a new business called Areatres. This place is a state of the art office rental workspace. The facilities are top notch and he is right at ground zero of the trendiest neighborhood in Palermo Viejo.

Martin has generously offered a couple of months of office space for Democrats Abroad Argentina. I don´t know what we will do after we have gotten so used to such spectacular diggs for our meetings. I for one will go through Areatres withdrawal syndrome.

If you need a temporary office and you like the idea of having a very quick internet connection, wireless printer access, projectors, clean, quite offices, beautiful furniture, entrepreneurial spirit draping everything in sight, then you should check this place out.

Could it have been a coincidence that while we were at Areatres, we finally reached one of our biggest goals this year of filling all the sub-committee chairs? Maybe it was all that efficiency in the air.

Now I could confidently say that pretty soon we will start seeing actual Democrats Abroad Events. Although, it is not the only thing we are planning.

Stay tuned.

New Cliente - Carrefour (ingles / castellano)

It took a while, but we are finally in Carrefour. They have too many locations to count, but we are not going to be in all of them, just 40 stores to start. I get bored with the idea of listing out all 40 stores so here is just a sample of some of the bigger ones:

Tardamos un poco pero finalmente estamos en Carrefour. Tienen demasiado locales para contar, pero no vamos a estar en todos, solamente en 40 para empezar. Yo me aburro con la idea de dejar la lista completa de los locales en donde vamos a estar, pero les puedo dejar una lista mas corta:

Pilar
San Fernando
San Isidro
Moreno
San Martin
Vicente Lopez
Velez Sarsfield
San Lorenzo
Warnes
Salguero
Avellaneda
Quilmes
Adrogue
La PLata
Norcenter
Beruti
Monroe & Montañeses
Cabildo 2400
Devoto
Scalabrini Ortiz 3100
Martinez (3 locations Edison, Italia, and Libertador)
Acasusso
etc.

As well as locations in the interior of the country like Cordoba, Mendoza, Rosario, Salta, Chaco, and Corrientes.

También vamos a estar en el interior del país como en Cordoba, Mendoza, Rosario, Salta, Chaco, y Corrientes.

If you go to your favorite Carrefour and you don´t see the Sugar & Spice brand of baked goodies, you can always tell them that you would like to have them there. Customer coments are not ignored.

Si van a su local de Carrefour mas cercano y no ven los productos de Sugar & Spice, pueden avisar al gerente que les gustaría comprar sus favoritas galletitas. Crean me que los comentarios de los consumidores no son ignorados.

Top 50 Best of Buenos Aires

I just found out that Time Out Buenos Aires included Sugar & Spice in their Top 50 Best of Buenos Aires. My scanner sucks so I can´t really scan the article, but it is very flattering.

This came out in January of 2009, but it´s even better than finding a $20 in your pocket that has gone through the wash, alone and forgotten.

Sorry Time Out, I will pay more attention from now on.

Problems of Jumbo Proportions

From Estuches

I know,every time someone asks me how business is going I often say "Great!" or "Good", and it is really; but, I also have the occasional problem that keeps me up at night.

Jumbo is one of our biggest clients. They are a supermarket chain, and recently, they have been the source of my biggest headaches.

It all started great. They carried most of our products. They were so happy with those that they asked us to do their private label cookies for them and we did. After a while, I also talked them into carrying our budines (pound cakes).

They were squeamish at first; and rightly so, since our budines would retail for way more than their highest costing budin at that time. I told them to just try it and if they could not sell them I would take them back. They turned out to be our biggest movers. They sold more budines than anyone else in Argentina. I knew they would sell really well, but they sold even more than what I thought they would.

Jackpot, right?

Well, everything was going peaches until Jumbo switched their ordering system to Disco´s ordering system. Disco is owned by Jumbo and it was a pretty good merger for these two. Jumbo was more the very big box style of supermarket and Disco had many more locations, but they were way smaller.

Anyway, the system change hosed everything up. The budine orders have dried up and they are a trickle of what they used to be. The few that get to the supermarket shelves get snatched up right away. The stores can´t order directly anymore, it all has to be done automatically.

There are two Jumbo locations that got so fed up with this that they ordered directly from us (Palermo and Unicenter) even though they are expecting to get spanked for it from the powers above, and I don´t mean celestial powers either.

So if you are reading this and you are a consumer of our budines from Jumbo, you should be able to find them very soon again at either Palermo or Unicenter.

If you shop at Disco or any other Jumbo store, you can complain about the lack of budines at your local shop. They do pay attention to customer complaints, suggestions, etc.

Meanwhile, I have to keep visiting the stores; keep talking to the store managers; keep waiting at the buyer´s office (because she doesn´t answer my phone calls), and call her from her lobby in the hopes that they would like to sell, once again, one of their best selling products in its segment.

Pulling teeth has got to be easier than this.

Speaking Presentation at BAIN

If you are in town this Friday, and you would be interested in hearing me talk about my company´s humble beginnings then you should head on over to ICANA on Friday.

BAIN has invited me to be the guest presenter this month and I will be talking about how I started Sugar & Spice way back in 2002.

There will obviously be free cookies to munch on.

**************************************************

The following is the BAIN invite, which they also published in the Buenos Aires Herald.

This month's Downtown BAIN meeting will be held Friday, March 27 from
**** 3 to 5 p.m. ****

We will be meeting at our usual location of ICANA, at Maipú 672 (downtown between Viamonte and Tucamán).

This month's program will be "Starting a Successful Business in Argentina." Our speaker is Frank E. Almeida, proprietor of Sugar & Spice, Palermo Hollywood. Thinking about starting a business in Argentina? Learn first-hand from someone who has succeeded in the process.

If you have any English language books that you would like to donate to ICANA, please bring them along.

For the meeting: Downtown members - no charge; Suburbs members - $AR5 crossover charge; guests - $AR10


Please RSVP via email to Bonnie at bonniekraft@yahoo.com

We're going to have an after-meeting social, at Empire Thai, Tres Sargentos 427, about four blocks from ICANA. Everyone is invited!

See you at the meeting!

Racist Test

Quick, what was your first reaction on seeing this Russian ad for a new ice cream?

I have to admit that I thought it was cute and funny. I saw this at Comedy Central´s Indecision blog, who in turn got it from Huff Po. Some of the comments are also pretty good.

But we are aware that you americans are a bit hysterical about accidently showing your racism.--Arodo

You know what's way more offensive than a smiling cartoon Obama in a Russian ad?
The American writer imposing his own culture-specific taboos on other countries--nobodyatall

I also remember reading someone saying that we in turn have used Russians to sell blast shelters, which one would be more offensive?

In any case, the Huff Po writer Alex Leo is all offended by this. I just can't see why.

This does remind me of several conversations I have had regarding racism here in Argentina. Yes, it exists like it does in just about every corner of the world, but it is also different. We as Americans can not come down to another country and impose our own culture specific taboos on other cultures.

One case in point is that many people in Latin America use the term "negrito" or "gordita" and they are used as terms of endearment. I remember being in the States and calling my girls gorditas and a friend of mine was shocked that I might be sowing the seeds of some future neurosis in my child. Yes, she is right that if I lived in the States I should not be calling my child fatso or chubby, but gordita has nothing to do with those terms and my girls live in Argentina. If I were to move back, I would have to stop referring to them in that way.

If you are an expat, have you started to notice some of your own cultural projections? Have you been able to overcome them? Or have you wrapped yourselves in this new culture, snuggled up to your significant other, slapped them in the ass and called them "mi gordita(o)de mi corazon" and have gotten a kiss back instead of a slap or a cold shoulder?

Instead of it being a racist test, you have now turned it into a cultural adaptation test. Good luck, now start practicing.

Now I just hope some of that Obama inspired marketing mojo finds its way over here.

New Client - Avicar

Last year, sadly, al Queso, queso opted out of our relationship. Yes, I was dumped and I was sad to see them go.

Now I have another fiambreria type store that has picked up Sugar & Spice.

Avicar started out modestly in 1972 as a neighborhood butcher shop. The husband and wife team opened up shop in the barrio of Almagro.

Today they have 22 locations and are opening up one more this year. They are also going to start offering franchise opportunities and are betting big on Argentina.

The owners are fans of our cookies and they specifically asked their people to contact us to see if we would be interested in gracing their stores´s shelves.

Since products like ours are still relatively new in this market, they are testing us out in four locations:

Arenales 2701
Federico Lacroze 1726
Cabildo 3363
Las Heras 2400

If you are a customer of theirs, you now have one more place you can buy our cookies and pound cakes. If you haven´t tried Avicar, now is your chance.

They have grown from just a butcher shop and now they are a cross between a butcher shop, fiambrería, and neighborhood autoservicio (food market). You could actually get all your weekend grill shopping done in one place from the meat, to the salad ingredients, to wine and now yummy cookies for dessert. Psst, they also deliver!



If your nearest Avicar does not carry our cookies yet, let them know that you would really like it if they would. I don´t want this to be just a relationship on the rebound.

I´m Sorry, Rush

I haven´t seen anyone apologize so quickly, and the list keeps getting longer:

• RNC Chairman Micheal Steele
• Congressman Phil Gingrey (R-GA)
• Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC)

I wonder what it feels like to insult Rush and then go groveling for forgiveness...

Now you can find out and you can do it in your underwear if you want.

Give the Secret Republican Apology Machine a try.