#49 Picking Up Speed!

My training host family celebrating Orlandito's pre-school graduation

After two weeks of Spanish and technical training out of site, I was eager to get back and more eager to get busy! I wasted no time and, therefore, have made huge strides in just the past few days…

I came back on a Friday and worked with the owner of the hotel/restaurant place I live at to begin using some basic accounting over the weekend. This meant just tallying the sales of chicken/steak/pig/other meat. It was by no means perfect seeing as, at times, they forgot to mark down sales or were ‘too busy’ to do so. However, all in all, I would say she managed to mark down 75% of her sales. When compared to 0%, that is a huge improvement.

But just wait, it gets more interesting.

Monday came around and the owner, a Mrs. Chilo, and myself sat down for a solid three hours to discuss the problems she was facing: a lack of quality control, inefficiency, speed and getting orders out on time, customer service lacks when busy or the staff chats with customers instead of preparing orders, zero marketing, and no record of accounting whatsoever – prices being decided upon with complete arbitrariness.

Sam and myself in Leon's central park for their biggest yearly party

I was quick to realize that she was not oblivious to the problems whatsoever, but was, however, blind to the solutions. At first she had been referring to her restaurant as a mere food stand, so the first step was to realize that she had a real, functioning restaurant and needed to be treated it as such. We talked about ways to improve efficiency, marketing strategies and promotions, and – the part she loved the most – using accounting to find various the various costs of the plates she offered.

Holding my kin :)
New baby boy from the aunt of my host family named Zac after yours truly

The next day, I woke up to find her and two women who work for her, changing the kitchen around to the changes we had discussed the day prior. I was absolutely delighted to actually see her making the little changes we had discussed yesterday. I have no doubt that this is just the beginning and her business will be a big success in my Peace Corps experience. (Since typing this originally, she has successfully been recording every single one of her sales)

The same day, I got invited to work on grant writing with an organization seeking over $400,000 from the Inter-American Development Bank. I was handed a 15 page grant proposal in Spanish to help edit and am finding it extremely challenging, but thoroughly enjoying the process. I’ll keep you posted!

Pre-school graduation

Lastly, I have made plans to start working with a group of men making a tourist map for the Island of Ometepe where I live. They have made these maps for other tourist locations around Nicaragua and Ometepe was next on their list. This works out perfectly because just last week I had decided I would make this a main project of mine, only to find out that a professional experienced business had the same plans. Things couldn’t be working out any better.