A Tale of Two Businesses:

Entrepreneurs gain success by finding a niche and filling it

By Sharon McDonnell

When Edwin Rodriguez invented a gadget to make peeling plantains easier without messing up your hands or the fruit, he knew exactly what he had to do. He called a food writer at The New York Times.
The writer said she couldn’t do a story because the product wasn’t commercially available, so six years later, Rodriguez called again. By then, the former unemployed janitor had found a manufacturer in China. He earned a coup many only dream of: A two-page story about him and his firm, Caribbean Food Implements, in the Times early this year.
Pratt Morales also has attracted a lot of media attention, but not for inventing a gadget. When Morales opened his bakery in Albuquerque, New Mexico, more than 30 years ago, he wanted to stand out. He focused on a novelty item—bread sculpture—treating bread dough as an art medium, much like clay, stone or ice. Since then, Morales’ Golden Crown Panaderia has sculpted 10-foot Christmas trees, six-foot dinosaurs, cacti, castles, skulls for “Day of the Dead,” Thanksgiving turkeys, pet dogs—even a trombone for the 80th birthday of a Latin American studies professor at the University of New Mexico. Media coverage has come from many corners, including the Food Network’s Food Finds show, Gourmet magazine, and even Southwest Airlines’ in-flight magazine.
Rodriguez and Morales may be peddling vastly different products, but they both are combatants in the highly competitive food business. They have in common a taste for bold, creative ideas, a knack for winning spectacular publicity without paying for advertising or a public relations firm, and the ironclad resolve to sell ethnic products beyond a local market.
Finding it hard to obtain loans from banks, both landed loans from nonprofit organizations, and both benefited from what appeared to be astounding strokes of luck—but, more accurately, was preparation that put them in the right place at the right time to meet opportunity.
Morales, the veteran Mexican-American business owner whose bakery is Albuquerque’s oldest, has carefully analyzed why neighborhood bakeries go out of business, and tried to learn from the mistakes of others. One of the things he found is that many fail to take a fresh approach to baking bread, so to speak. “They don’t come into the 21st century, but do what’s been done for the past 100 years,” he says. As a result, “We’ve gone the extra mile. We’re at a whole different level.”
For example, one of Golden Crown’s specialties is biscochitos, New Mexico’s official state cookie. Mainly of Spanish origin but influenced by Mexican and Native American cultures, biscochitos are served during the Christmas season, fiestas and weddings in particular. Golden Crown is the only bakery in Albuquerque that makes them. It has seized a very specialized section of the market, flavoring the cookies with anise and cinnamon. But to cater to contemporary food preferences and keep the interest of customers, it also makes them in three other varieties: chocolate, cappucino and sugar-free. At Christmas, lines form around the block for pre-ordered biscochitos.
The small bakery has broadened the definition of neighborhood to include the globe, thanks to its website, www.goldencrown.biz, created in 2003 by Morales’ son, Chris, who is also a baker. As a result, Golden Crown has shipped biscochitos to buyers in some pretty unlikely places—like Russia, Alaska, Italy, Patagonia and Nigeria, where a grocery store ordered 500 pounds after seeing Morales on TV. The cookies are purchased by visitors who crave a taste of New Mexico’s distinctive food after returning home, the curious who saw or read media accounts, and those who know and love the cookies but just can’t find them where they live.
Another specialty that can be purchased through the website is Morales’ green chile bread, which is usually stuffed with chile peppers and cheese. Golden Crown’s fancy version adds tomatoes, cilantro, onions and spices—not to mention a design of a coyote howling at the moon on top. “This is a piece of art,” declares Morales, who says he has no desire to be in supermarkets and risk sacrificing quality for quantity.
A former Air Force accountant with a degree from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, where he was born, Morales is scrupulous about cost control and efficiency. Robots sweep the floor at night (“they don’t do an excellent job, but a pretty good job”). There is no food waste: “At bakeries nationwide 10 percent of what’s made is not going to sell, but I make only what I know will sell,” he notes. Savings alone bankrolled his bakery—the first space he leased contained equipment, since another bakery had failed—until his first loan three years ago from Accion International, a nonprofit lender.
That was no the approach taken by Rodriguez get his E-Z Plantain Peeler off the ground. It took loans and assistance from many corners to get his business rolling, but this Puerto Rican-born entrepreneur from New York’s East Harlem simply would not give up.
The product had an inauspicious beginning. Rodriguez, who has no college degree, began fiddling with carving a peeler from wood after he was laid off from his job as a public school janitor in East Harlem in 1990. Inspired by a friend who complained about the mess of peeling plantains, he eventually came up with design that now includes a stainless steel blade and blade protector.
Rodriguez took his invention to a plastics factory in the Bronx, where an engineer lent a sympathetic ear and lots of advice, and ultimately bought a blueprint for his invention for $2,700.
After obtaining a U.S. patent for his E-Z Peeler in 1995, and Rodriguez was invited to take part in an invention competition sponsored by Hammacher Schlemmer, the New York store. His device ended up as one of 18 semifinalists out of 350 contestants, and was featured in a film about their “Search for Invention.”
After reading in a local newspaper that the East Harlem Business Capital Corporation was launching free 15-week classes for budding business owners, he signed up. On the day that bankers and the Small Business Administration came to hear the students’ business plans, Rodriguez asked if he could cater the meal. He wowed them with foods he made from plantains, like plantain lasagna and steak sandwiches, where the fruit substituted for pasta and bread. EHBCC was so impressed they offered him a $40,000 loan to start a restaurant, but he demurred. They instead agreed on a $10,000 loan to manufacture the peeler from plastic.
Rodriguez found a partner by happenstance: he stopped in an East Harlem bar one night when a re-run of the Hammacher Schlemmer film was aired on The History Channel’s Modern Marvels. Bar owner Tito Santiago decided to invest in Caribbean Food Implements with him, closed his bar, and the pair now occupy a floor in an East Harlem building.
On the road to bringing his product to market, Rodriguez discovered that plastic manufacturing in the U.S. was far too expensive. He sought help from SCORE, a nonprofit organization where retired business executives offer small businesses free consulting advice. A retired factory owner gave him the name of a Chinatown business organization, and Rodriguez eventually found a factory in Fujian, China, that agreed to make a plastic mold for $7,000. EHBCC officials felt he used the money wisely, and lent him another $20,000.
His website, www.lococonlosplatanos.com, was created by his son, Edwin, Jr. It sells not only the E-Z Peeler ($13) but a three-piece set that also includes a cookbook he wrote and a tostonera ($29.95). Feeling the need to diversify, Rodriguez invented the plastic tostonera that both flattens fried plantains and shapes them into cups for traditional stuffed plantains. His cookbook, lavishly illustrated with color photographs, offers mostly plantain recipes from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic “with a different twist,” ranging from Tostones with Shrimp in Ajilimojili Sauce, a hot tomato and garlic sauce, his own plantain lasagna, and stuffed eye of round (“the Puerto Ricans call it carne mechada,Cubans call it boliche).
Rodriguez says he called Amanda Hesser at The New York Times because, “When plantains went mainstream, she wrote an article and said the trick is in the peel. If she didn’t like my peeler, I wouldn’t have gone ahead—but she loved it.”
After her story, calls came in from places where plantains hardly seem abundant: France, Wisconsin, Kentucky, India, Canada, South Africa and England, among others. He believes in his product, and hopes to word keeps spreading.
“I’m just a blue-collar guy trying to make it,” says Rodriguez.
Morales, the baker, surely can relate. From his 30-year perspective as a small businessman, he offers a few words of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Find people with the expertise you lack, hang around professionals, and clarify your goals. Do you want people to run the business for you, while you keep inventing? Do you need more money? How will you allocate it?
“I’ve seen people with brilliant products sitting in the garage,” he notes.
And probably just as important, find a niche and fill it.

Sharon McDonnell is a New York City-based freelance writer and author of seven nonfiction books. She can be reached for story ideas at sharonfmc@cs.com.