We've been working on the financial spreadsheets for our smoothie business and we need to cut costs or we need to raise prices. Raising prices here would be death to the business so we went to the market today. Up to this point we paid a white tax on everything and I've been happy to pay it but the free market has spoken and we're here to compete. So today we went into the belly of the central market to haggle with the old women over every nickel and dime. I should say this place is a huge labyrinth of stores and carts with shoppers and sales people (a lot of ladies with some product carried in a bucket or plate on their head) squeezing through the isles. We always get lost and at some point I have always gotten uncomfortable about the sketchiness of the whole thing. I can usually use my sense of smell to tell me where I am. They have produce sections (rotting mangoes, bananas, etc.), tortillas sections, they have touristy sections with wood carvings and woven hammocks (dusty/musty), and the big give away is the meat section, and only slight less (and surprisingly less) smelly the fish section.
Anyway the important thing is there are so many shops and vendors we just move on if we don't like the price. Also there are so many conditions and qualities of fruit and bad fruit makes a bad smoothie. But after some good efforts we found cheap and good fruit. And we found bulk for all our other ingredients except the secret ingredient...peanut butter. We've only found one store in another city about a half hour away. It looks like the average cost to produce a 0.3L smoothie is about 25 cents. We plan to sell them for about 50 cents. That doesn't pull in much but enough for a living wage here. Plus over time we should be able to find lower cost supplies and hopefully increase sales.
