Two small hams and a mini sausage
Photo by Aurelio Pedroso
By Aurelio Pedroso
21 April 2012
The private initiative boom seems to be unstoppable and irreversible when compared to one of Cuba’s three main problems: nourishment.
In spite the stubbornness of those who still think that the country’s food supply must be controlled from ministerial heights – instead of having these ministries dealing with more complex matters – private gastronomy has been slowly taking the place of what the state has to offer.
A decisive reason: incentive
In a country like ours, there are three or four supersonic rumors each day which circulate the island, probably a result of a lust for changes, especially for the suppression of medieval regulations.
Prudence, calculation and study of new ways of interpreting socialism, or bringing it back to life, for that matter, are put to the test by the common desire for timely decisions. Just take a look at the recent statements released to AFP by the head of parliament regarding a thorough reformulation of migratory policy. Impatience and waiting games are part of the Cuban paradox of nowadays.
Just a few weeks ago I had one of those rumors which landed via phone. And quite a logical one: the overexcited source informed me that five renowned restaurants in the Vedado neighborhood had been handed over to its employees in the guise of cooperatives. One of them, the almost defunct Varsovia, was on the list. It was so close to my office that I could not wait to go there and ask the first person I ran into, a man cleaning the floor who said: “This still belongs to the government, sir.”
The debut in our local scene of a ferocious supply-offer mechanism of marketing is worth seeing: more than giving advice or helping to understand the product, the idea is to work your way inside the consumer’s brain. Tío Tico, a recently created Havana spot with four tables – which is unusual for a cafeteria – seems to have it all clear about how to compete while educating potential consumers who not only are expected to eat, taste and enjoy but also to exercise their mathematical abilities by multiplying and dividing.
They employ no less than fast food emporium strategies such as “Take a mega-hamburger and we give you another hamburger at 50%. Buy two ticomix and we give you a mini-tico at 50%. Two small ham steaks and we give you one mini sausage at 50%. Bring our five characters together and take a free pizza”, as long as you show an impeccably printed multicolor card, which you can’t find, nor will you find for a long time, in the inside pages of the local press but which any youngster around the city will put in your hands in a parking lot, at a red-traffic light or in one of those ubiquitous lines. The Tío Tico´s owner, a young man according to two of his employees, never answered my request to sit and talk about his business and its financing, now six-months old.
I don’t intend to be original if I say that all this privatization in the gastronomic sector brings about a positive change in image for a country where only a few years ago it was a Saharan miracle to find a glass of cold water on the street.
Certainly it won´t cause much of an impact on our macro-economy for mini ham steaks and mini sausages cannot replace well thought out state schemes. But it does open a door for all those state employees pretending to be working while the administration pretends to pay them, as the classic socialist joke goes. Now those very same workers are thinking and creating minor scale private projects, without being a burden on the state, but rather a solution for the community. Many of these places will eventually belong to those who are not yet born. “This was started by my pop,” could be a future advertisement because fashion, industry and history have a common tendency to repeat themselves.
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