Business Overview
Mrs. Reyna, a Suyapan community member, began selling her homemade chicken and pork tamales in 2018. Whether it be to family, friends or other community members, she has sold countless tamales and grown her business towards popularity within Suyapa. But, despite her past success, Mrs. Reyna hopes to expand her business even further in the coming years.
Tamales Reyna - Suyapa, Honduras
Economic Challenge
Tamales Reyna has identified a couple economic difficulties that accompany the maintenance of a small business in Suyapa, Honduras and they are as followed:
- Seasonal Employment: A major cash crop in the community of Suyapa is sugar cane, but due to its seasonal nature, it causes fluctuation in employment rates. Therefore, during the off-season, the lack of economic cash flow causes major disruption to other small microenterprises in the area.
- Loan Capability: Due to the local Caja Rural being in the primary stages of creation, it lacks the capacity to fulfill a substantial loans for small microenterprises such as Mrs. Isabel Reyna’s tamale market.
The Business
As it currently stands, Mrs. Reyna’s tamale market has been experiencing a favorable amount of success. Tamales Reyna has shown promising growth in sales and production. For example, when Mrs. Reyna began her business, she was selling approximately 
50 tamales per week but in one year, had increased her weekly production and sale to 70 tamales. Mrs. Reyna growth in this period shows promising results for how her business can proceed positively, but with increased access to capital via Caja Rural loans, she believes she can mimic the success seen over the past year. It is her hope to eventually receive a sizable loan from the Caja in order to facilitate an increased production and sale of her tamales. Her goal is to increase sales to 100+ tamales per week, and as a result begin buying products in bulk, saving her money and increasing her overall profit.
Competitive Advantage
Mrs. Reyna has identified a couple of strong competitive advantages that help cultivate success within her small business. First and foremost, is the community buy-in. Her strong presence and reliability have allowed for her to build a reputation in which other community members feel they can trust. This trusts ranges from consistent and helpful assistance while purchasing from her, the quality of her product, and lastly the overall satisfaction! With such a strong reputation among community members, Mrs. Reyna works relentlessly to ensure her service is up to par. One last advantage Mrs. Reyna has over other competing business’s is her optimal location. Her shop is situated on a main road which allows for great exposure to those passing by. She is able to build a strong clientele list from loyal customers while also catching the stray travelers that find themselves moving through Suyapa. With such a wide variety of customers, Mrs. Reyna believes that this is a prime opportunity to grow her business’ success.
Obstacles
Although with many strengths to her microenterprise, Mrs. Reyna has also identified a couple of weaknesses she feels must be addressed in order for her business to continuously prosper. The main weakness identified is the inconsistencies in cash flow recording. Like many small business’ found in rural communities, the recording of cash flow can be difficult due to various reasons. For example, lack of educational background, multiple clerks working throughout the day, etc. But, without accounting the daily sales and expenses, Mrs. Reyna finds it quite difficult to track the success of her tamale market. Without this knowledge, Mrs. Reyna is unable to make educated financial and general business decisions regarding her shops operations. This poses a major problem for her shops growth, and therefore why she may benefit from the assistance of a business brigade. In addition, Mrs. Reyna had also expressed difficulty in the current access to capital within the community. As previously mentioned, due to the the Caja Rural being in the preliminary stages of creation, it is, at the moment, unable to provide an adequate loan. Without this access to loans, she is for the time being unable to grow her inventory needed to expand her business.
Next Steps
The tasks thatTamales Reyna has prioritized are:
Page Last Updated:March 30, 2020