Fedelicia s Tortillas / Bollos / Tamales. Rutgers University March 2015

Transcription

1 Fedelicia s Tortillas / Bollos / Tamales Rutgers University March 2015

2 CU BUSINESS BRIGADE NAME Fedelicia Guiguanora AGE 65 PROFESSION Farmer / Homemaker STATUS Married NUMBER OF CHILDREN 6 BUSINESS Sale of Tortillas / Bollos / Tamales NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES Familia Insert Picture BUSINESS OVERVIEW Fedelicia has a plot of land where she cultivates corn which she eventually started a business and started to sell tortillas inside and outside the community. After many years of herself and her son grinding up the corn manually, she decided to buy a machine to help her, which she just recently paid off. Her work has become simplified by this machine however, it is always in need of repair. She also sells bollos and tamales, but not as much as she sells tortillas. Although she knows about loans, payments, and the caja rural, she does not write down her expenses/revenues as much as she should. But she is recently learning how to correctly manage her expenses.

3 BUSINESS: Fedelicia s Tortillas / Bollos / Tamales RUTGERS BUSINESS BRIGADE FACTOR 1 FACTOR 2 FACTOR 3 FACTOR 4 STRENGHTS She was the first person to sell the tortillas to the community so she has an advantage over other competitors. She has all of the resources she needs to have a successful business. There is not much else she can do but find more ways to make what she has more profitable and more efficient. There is a stable demand for her products. They are things that everyone will always buy. She has experience with a business because she had a store before. Fedelicia has been able to make responsible decisions based on her experience (such as not giving credit to customers).

4 BUSINESS: Fedelicia s Tortillas / Bollos / Tamales RUTGERS BUSINESS BRIGADE FACTOR 1 FACTOR 2 FACTOR 3 FACTOR 4 CHALLENGES She has little to no financial education, and keeps little records of her finances. Because she is elderly she feels that it is difficult to do hard work. She isn t able to work for a long time and sell tortillas to different places. Her tortilla / bollo machine is mostly broken and always needs repair. This makes it hard for her to make as many tortillas as she can. She has to invest money to repair. Constant change of price of corn.

5 BUSINESS BRIGADE Day 3 [Date] Day 4 [Date] Day 5 - [Date] - Describe meeting - What did you and the business owner(s) do? - How did the business owner(s) react? - What questions did the business owner(s) have? - What specific requests did the business owner(s) have? - What recommendations did you provide? - What are some next steps? - etc. Fedelicia is very lovely but she was shy at first. We asked her very basic questions to find out more about her business. But she was very willing to help us. She invited us to her house and explained us about her business procedure. We asked her some specific questions that we discussed at yesterday night. We talked about different cultures and she participated in more. We discussed with her about the ideas to improve her business, such as teaching her how to record.

6 BUSINESS:Fedelicia s Tortillas / Bollos / Tamales SOLUTION 1 SOLUTION 2 SOLUTION 3 SOLUTION 4 Get loan to buy a new machine to help her make more tortillas. RUTGERS BUSINESS BRIGADE Get a table or stand to sell her products. Learn how to use a financial sheet and how to calculate simple sales. Market her business, such as spreading the word in the school near her house. PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

7 FURTHER DETAILS & OBSERVATIONS None. RUTGERS BUSINESS BRIGADE INFORMATION GATHERED AFTER INITIAL QUESTIONS None.

8 RUTGERS BUSINESS BRIGADE NEXT STEPS IMMEDIATE CHANGES She learned how to use the easy type of record sheet. She is going to use the sheet to make her business data clear. She focuses on the product which is the most profitable. SHORT TERM CHANGES (WITHIN 3 MONTHS) Hopefully she will learn how to fill out the financial sheet Save money to pay back her loan for machine. Marketing her business after she can more tortillas. MEDIUM LONGER TERM CHANGES (+3 MONTHS) Attract more customers Save more money by selling tortillas to fix her house. Expand her business( make 300 packets a day).

9 BEST PRACTICES FOR DELIVERING WORKSHOPS Herself RUTGERS BUSINESS BRIGADE ADVICE FOR FUTURE BRIGADES Next brigade should teach her how to market, how to reach more customers, because at that time, she might already have a new machine to make more products, then the supply would be enough. She said she can sell all of tortillas no matter how much she makes. So expanding the demand seems to be more important. Next brigaders should try to find new way to expand, such as more communities, some restaurants and establishing relationship with school. She already learned how to record her expense and profits, next time you could improve her sheet to make it clearer.

10 RUTGERS BUSINESS BRIGADE CONTACT DETAILS BUSINESS OWNER(S) Name: Fedelicia COORDINATOR Name: Patricia Afu, Juan D, TRANSLATOR(S) Name: Gerardo Goliz Rogers Name: Phone RUTGERS UNIVERSITY BUSINESS BRIGADE Names of all students: Xinyi Huang, Xinyi Shen, Xiande Xu, Rida Kazmi, Tonghe