Mrs. Tapia has worked in her bodega for four years. While the hours are extraordinarily long (5am to 11pm everyday), Ceneida says she prefers it to her previous job of selling clothing, if only because this job is in the front of her house and so she can see her children everyday. Her store operates both as a grocery for her neighbors and a kiosk of snacks and sodas for the neighborhood kids. Her breakfast supplies for the customers comes in at 5am while the lunch supplies come in at 9am. The grocery products vegetables, rice, sugar, breakfast items, etc. used to be in the front of the store, but after several years she now has a reputation and can keep the groceries in the back of the store and people can just ask her. This arrangement works well because grocery buyers usually know what they want while kids who want snacks do not know what they want and thus what they see is what they will ask for (in other words, if all the cookies were hidden from view, no one would buy them while if all the eggs are hidden, people still ask for them). While that may seem that economics is pushing an unhealthy agenda (cookies in front, healthy foods hidden), she tells me that actually cookies and candies have the lowest profit margins while vegetables have the most profit potential (50% of their price is profit). Thus, economics remains a mixed bag in terms of health outcomes at least in the microeconomic paradigm of bodegas in the suburbia of Lima, Peru.
Your loan helped Mrs. Tapia specifically in the process of ordering supplies. Ceneida receives her merchandise from distributors (often a teenager on a bicycle) every week. She must ask for the items a week in advance and pay when they are delivered. Having a bigger base of capital from her access to the credit you provided allows her a greater cushion in her weekly orders (ie not as dependent on last weeks sales to finance next weeks products). This is particularly beneficial for the weeks with major holidays when she will need a greater supply of products than usual. Mrs. Tapia typically makes 20 soles in daily profits on weekdays and 30-40 soles daily on weekends. One interesting investment she recently made for her bodega was the purchase of a large thatch roof for the front patio. I thought it was purchased so people could sit and drink in front of her store but she told me it was actually because of the sun. In the late afternoons, the angle of the sun meant that the sunlight fell on the front of her store and melted the chocolates and cookies there. With the thatch roof, the store is cooler and the chocolate safe from the sunlight. As hinted at earlier in the description of her daily schedule, Mrs. Ceneida Tapia does all of her work for her children. She has three kids ages 11, 9, and 5 and her dream is that her hard work will allow them to study and one day become professionals. Thank you for your extension of credit to Mrs. Tapia and her business; it made a difference and is a credit to you as well.
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EDAPROSPO, Luz Neyra, Cevicheby joshtoro1,496 views
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