Rosquillas & Coffee & MORE Rosquillas

5/1/2009
Our group split into two today...
Kate, Hayley, and Joy (our Global Business Brigade Project based in Honduras) left with the Marquette Medical Brigade so that they could meet with CORAH. This is a functional co-op which grows, processes, and exports organic, free-trade coffee and is a potential future project for GBB.
The rest of us (Jorge, Erin, Roberto, Brenda, Rosario, Sandra, and Sarah), along with our driver Rafa (short for Rafal), headed to the capital, Tegucigalpa. Here we picked up Andreas Obreist (our Global Business Brigade Program Director) and began our day of market research. This required us to visit various locations throughout “Teguci” which sell Rosquillas and then divide and conquer. The shops we visited ranged from a tiny, cramped, sweaty, local shop to the Honduran Wal*Mart (Hyper Paiz) and from an upscale bakery & café specializing in high-end imported foods to the local grocery store. Those most proficient and fluent in Spanish handled the speaking rolls: Sandra and Jorge conducted one-on-one interviews with customers and people in the street; Rosario and Andreas meet with store managers or their purchasing managers and discussed the Rosquilla market and new product introduction. Meanwhile Roberto, Brenda, Erin, and Sarah searched for the stores’ Rosquilla shelves, took notes, and purchased MANY samples for further research later this evening. We were joined by members of the co-op, periodically, who helped a bit with the research and also brought us some more sample of their Rosquillas for further comparison. Before leaving Teguci, we visited the Basilica and parted with Andreas near the GBB Headquarters.
One of the co-op members, Amado, owns and runners a nursery on the main road from Teguci to Nuevo Paraiso so we stopped by for a tour and more conversation about the co-op and its possibilities. Besides learning some more about Vivero Montes Del Sinai (the nursery), Jorge, Roberto, and Sarah adventure through a bit of jungle to the small stream and waterfall in the valley’s basin facing rough terrain and risking increased malaria exposure.
Our last stop for the day was Valle San Francisco, a small community about eight minutes past Nuevo Paraiso. We toured the modest church there and took a stroll around the town square, appreciating the family environment and liveliness on a Monday night in Honduras.
In a few minutes (at 7:30 PM) we will begin our evening re-group and begin a night of planning and preparation for tomorrow.