Business Overview

Mr. Mario Ismael Pineda’s plantain chip business started with the urgent need to make money. He couldn’t find a stable job more than seasonal work and started to notice that his earnings from the money he earned with these  jobs were very unstable. Having two kids to feed, he decided to start a plantain chip business, believing firmly that his product would be good. Above all, he would be able to sell them in the schools in the community because the only existing businesses that sold here were big companies like Pepsi o Dinant.

Tajaditas La Bendición - Suyapa, Honduras

Economic Challenge

The economic difficulties of the business are the following:

  • The lack of cash flow in the community throughout certain times of the year. Since the only business is the production of sugar cane, which is seasonal, this presents a significant challenge to provide more consistent jobs.
  • The lack of capital accessible to increase the inventory of new products

The Business

Mr. Mario and his wife work on making the plantain chips on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and depending on the occasion Sundays to sell at the evangelical church at the end of the service. The business is stable and allows Mario and his family to have an income. Nevertheless, he would be able to increase his production and look for other neighboring communities to see his product.

Competitive Advantage

Mr. Mario’s plantain chips have an enormous strength because it is a product with excellent quality. The main opportunity is that Mr. Mario has a product with a high growth potential to the surrounding communities. He could sell them in surrounding communities or cities if he could reach a great enough scale.

Obstacles

As with all the entrepreneurs of rural communities, he doesn’t keep record in a book that could help him know his earnings and expenses. It is a challenge for the majority of people with a lower education level and we must work with them on basic math skills to enforce seeing the greater picture and progressing their business forward to be more substantive. He also does not have the best packaging for his product that impact the perceived quality by his customers. He also lacks sufficient capital to grow and has a fear of not wanting to take on personal debt.

Next Steps

The tasks thatTajaditas La Bendición has prioritized are:

1: Take out a loan from the Caja Rural

Page Last Updated:January 23, 2020