Costa Rican Chamber of Food Industry seeks to help position Costa Rican SMEs in supermarkets

Photo: Forbes Centroamerica

This initiative helped 11 SMEs in Costa Rica by working together with experts in food technology, etc. 

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Costa Rica face different challenges in ensuring that their products are chosen in an increasingly competitive market, which is why the Chamber of the Food Industry (CACIA in Spanish) launched Pasión por el Sabor (Passion for Flavor), an initiative that seeks to promote these types of companies with advice.

This initiative helped 11 SMEs in Costa Rica by working together with experts in food technology, brand design, production, marketing, and sales belonging to the CACIA to improve their labels, as well as the product and recipe.

In addition, this initiative will seek to insert these SMEs in Costa Rica into supermarkets with the help of partners from supermarket chains, packaging, and corrugated companies such as Drink’s Comercial, Qualitat, Merka House, Fantesty, GS1.

Among the brands that received this support are La Maravillosa, which sells spicy olive oil with tree chili, Kema Jeta dedicated to hot sauce with jalapeño peppers, spices, and oil, Gricket house, the first protein bar developed in CAM based on cricket flour, or Chorizo don Bigotes, which has a 100-year history in Coronado, among many others.

Some challenges that SMEs in Costa Rica face are the lack of a formal strategy, lack of development necessary for exporting, lack of commercial contacts, lack of in-depth knowledge of their competitors and consumers, and deficiencies in their e-commerce strategies, among other key factors.

It is expected that with these improvements, the commercialization of the products will be a success in supermarkets such as Fresh Market, Automercado, Megasupery Perimercados.

The initiative is still open to those SMEs in Costa Rica dedicated to fruits or vegetables, grains, canned goods, dressings, sauces, and spices, etc., that seek to market their products on a larger scale with the advice of CACIA, they should only request more information through the mail cacia@cacia.org or telephone 2220 3031, so that those in charge can evaluate whether the project is suitable for this type of advice.

Source: Forbes Staff. (2022, May 10). CACIA busca ayudar a posicionar a PyMes de Costa Rica en supermercados. Forbes Centroamérica. Retrieved May 12, 2022, from https://forbescentroamerica.com/2022/05/10/cacia-busca-ayudar-a-posicionar-a-pymes-de-costa-rica-en-supermercados/