small business – katherine stanley obando

A new way to connect with Costa Rican cafés

Posted on May 27, 2020 by stanleyobando

I had a stomach virus for several days, which means that I wasn’t able to drink the Elixir of Life – or, at least, not in appropriate quantities. Today I was back to my beloved morning joe, and in gratitude, I’m dedicating today’s Boost to a local effort to support coffee shops.

Un Café para Seguir (A Coffee to Keep Going) is a lovely website that features a number of coffee shops and allows you to buy a gift certificate from them that you can use when the pandemic eases (many cafés are open now in keeping with government guidance, but at the same time, many families, like mine, are still staying home). I found it through a neighborhood spot I absolutely love, Santo Café, which I’m eager to support through this crisis, but learned about some other great spots by browsing the site.

I hope this new effort continues to grow, adding new shops, perhaps allowing us to buy specialty coffees and other services, and helping tourists find great, unique places for a cuppa once things improve.

What’s your favorite place to have a coffee in Costa Rica? Besides, of course, any quiet porch during an aguacero.

Costa Rican ecommerce, part II: The good stuff

Posted on May 7, 2020May 7, 2020 by stanleyobando

Here are some of the ideas, websites and initiatives I talked about in yesterday’s Daily Boost Live – all ways you can connect with Costa Rican entrepreneurs who need our support!

Calling all kids to help promote local businesses!

One of my dreams is to create more meaningful opportunities for kids in Costa Rica to support and learn from nonprofit initiatives. Today through Saturday, you can help me take the first steps towards this idea by having your kids draw or paint a picture of the place in Costa Rica they love to visit (or a place they’d love to visit in the future!) and sharing it on Instagram.

Just tag three friends and @givingtuesdaycostarica, use #givingtuesdaynow and #givingtuesdaykids, and you’ll be entered in a May 12th raffle of five $50 prizes to be spent at any local Costa Rican business you please. (If you’re out of the country and win, I can help you figure out how to use it – you could donate it or buy a gift certificate, etc.) And if you’re NOT a kid or kid-adjacent, you can participate by simply sharing a favorite photo from Costa Rica on Instagram and using the same tags!

Ways to buy Costa Rican products online – within Costa Rica

So many Costa Rican farmers are finding new ways to connect with customers during this crisis. I truly believe this is part of a shift for a country where, fairly recently (for example, in my mother-in-law’s lifetime), most all foods, from dairy to produce, were delivered to your door. Friend and reader Shannon Farley told me about Enraizadas, a group of rural families now making their fresh cheeses, organic produce, free-range poultry and more products available throughout greater San José. National Geographic this week featured Econexiones, where Monteverde producers are selling. And El Mercadito, an entity that organizes in-person markets to showcase small businesses, is building El Mercadito En Línea, which looks poised to become a sort of fair-trade, small-business, all-Costa Rican Amazon. Stay tuned, because the ingenuity and online shift is clearly just getting started.

Ways to buy Costa Rican products online – anywhere

I bought my first products from Local Keeps, a startup that connects Costa Rican producers with online customers and ships their work anywhere, in February. I’m fully obsessed and am preparing my next order now (if I can just figure out how to get mail reliably without going to the post office). From Adriana García’s natural cosmetics to Rosa Montealegre’s fruit jewelry to spiced hot chocolate mix from Sibú, this is my new go-to for gifts. And for myself. It’s been a long year.

Finally, in yesterday’s Live I gave a shout-out to my nephew Joey in North Carolina, who took the initiative during his lockdown to contact the makers of Caribbean Sabooor hot sauce (the best I’ve ever tried: it turns the most humble dish of rice and beans into a trip to Limón) and order 12 bottles, which they shipped to his door! As I’ve mentioned before, Green Communities Coffee will do the same. If there’s a Costa Rican product you love but that’s never been available online, now’s a great time to check again. Chances are they’ve started shipping during this unprecedented crisis.

Thanks to all those who are helping small businesses get through these hard times! Keep the ideas, tags and links coming.

Costa Rican ecommerce, part I: Daily Boost Live

Posted on May 6, 2020 by stanleyobando

In an unavoidably delayed, wobbly and internet-deprived Live, I showed off a few reasons why I really love Local Keeps, talked about a family-farming initiative out of Alajuela, and invited everyone to participate in Giving Tuesday Kids Costa Rica. (The alternative title of this video is: Find someone who looks at you the way I look at Caribbean Sabooor.) Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post with more links and information!

Staying home and shopping local

Posted on May 4, 2020 by stanleyobando

I’ve never been a particularly admirable shopper. While I love to shop locally for the fun stuff, I’ve never gone to great lengths to make sure that my necessities – food, clothes and so forth – were actually coming from companies that were doing good things for the world. To be honest, I think I felt guilty about making decisions based on convenience or price, and therefore stuck my head in the sand. But the pandemic has made me want to spend my shrunk-down dollars on things that my family needs and things that will save local economies. I mean, what choice do we have? My sense of guilt seems to have been replaced by a sense of power – and urgency.

So my question for you this week is, how has this crisis affected the way you’re shopping, or (for those of us without ways to acquire things, or without disposable income), thinking about shopping in the future? Of the many new websites and distribution channels that are popping up all over the place and will continue to do so, which look useful to you? Which local merchants are showing particular ingenuity? On Wednesday at 8 am CR, 10 am ET, I’ll talk about this issue and how some Costa Ricans are rising to the challenge. You might even get inspired to get a Costa Rican gift for Mother’s Day (might not arrive by Sunday, but hey, a crayon IOU card never goes out of style).

(Like the featured image? It’s by Carolina Rodríguez of ChepeArt. Read my post on her, here.)

Virtual Costa Rica: Invest in a future trip, or #dontcancelpostpone

Posted on March 27, 2020 by stanleyobando

Two main messages have emerged from Costa Rica’s hard-hit tourism industry, particularly its rural tourism industry, for international travelers who care about the country.

The first is: Please postpone, rather than cancel, any trips you had planned to Costa Rica. The hotels where you had reservations will likely be thrilled to work with you to make your reservation super flexible. The second is, if you were planning a trip anytime in the next two years and have any possibility of investing in that trip now, you could help save a rural tourism business.

I’ve heard from rural tourism businesses that are benefitting from both, and when I say “benefitting,” I mean crying tears of joy, seeing a small light at the end of the tunnel, being able to give some hope to employees who have no other way of feeding their families. It’s intense here, as it is everywhere.

Here’s an amazing video explaining the first idea:

And here’s what my dear friend Pip Kelly and her family at Casitas Tenorio B&B in the small town of Bijagua, in northern Costa Rica, pictured above, had to say about the second:

Have you been able to postpone, rather than cancel, a Costa Rican trip? Or have you bought a gift card or a future reservation for yourself or someone else? I’d love to hear your stories, and I wish health and calm for you and your families.

Calling all great ideas!

Posted on March 16, 2020March 15, 2020 by stanleyobando

Good morning! Not all my posts from now on will be about COVID-19: in fact, I think it’s high time for some sloth videos and other comforting, inspiring and motivating Costa Rican stories. That’s why I threw together a separate, temporary section on my website to focus entirely on information about how to help Costa Rican communities and organizations during COVID-19. (While health is of course the number one concern, Friday’s post laid out why the economic and social impact on tourism-driven Costa Rica has so many of us scared as well.)

For my boost today, I’d love for all of you to check it out – even if you have your hands full helping out your own community. Why? Because even if you have no time to buy from Costa Rican microbusinesses and your donation dollars are fully tied up elsewhere, I think that all of us who are trying to make a dent in this problem could benefit from hearing about creative things that communities are doing around the globe. So I would love, love, LOVE to hear from you if you have seen cool ideas happening around you and would like to share.

If, on the other hand, you are in Costa Rica or part of a circle that’s as Costa Rica-obsessed as my circle is, please share this page as widely as you can. I’ll be updating it regularly with new information, links and ideas. Here it is: https://katherinestanleyobando.com/costa-rica-and-covid-19/

Keep your ideas and comments coming, and tomorrow I’ll be back with our regularly scheduled programming: another excerpt from “Ticas sin miedo” in keeping with the March theme of unbelievably awesome women. Wishing you the best of health.

Do you love a Costa Rican tourism microenterprise? Now’s the time to reach out

Posted on March 12, 2020March 12, 2020 by stanleyobando

Today’s post is a quick preview of forthcoming information about the effect of travel cancellations due to COVID-19 on the social fabric of Costa Rica, but honestly, I’m so worried that I wanted to get something out there as soon as possible!

Do you know and love a Costa Rican enterprise that’s dependent on tourism for survival? A beloved family hotel, a community association, a nonprofit that depends on tourism for donations? It is undoubtedly facing mass cancellations, uncertainty and panic.

I realize, of course, that the economic impact of COVID-19economic impact of COVID-19 is being felt around the world, with many needs calling for our attention; that most everyone is struggling with this on various levels; and that health is, of course, the biggest concern here. However, if you’re stuck at home or otherwise have some bandwidth, do consider reaching out and even making a donation to that small business or cause you love.

I’d LOVE to hear from you if you or someone you know recently had to cancel an upcoming trip to Costa Rica (or postpone a trip you were hoping to book); if you have more information about organizations being hard hit by this situation; or if you have heard or thought of any creative ways entities in CR could mitigate this crisis and encourage support from folks who can’t come right now, but are concerned about Costa Rican communities. More to come! Watch this space.

Is there a pulpería in your life – or down your memory lane?

Posted on February 19, 2020February 19, 2020 by stanleyobando

I was walking to my homestay last week in Los Santos – more on that in a later post – when I stopped with a little cry of delight and scrambled through my bag, looking for my phone so I could take a photo. The woman at the center of the image was a little bemused, but during my 15 years in Costa Rica and 12 year married to the calmest man on the face of the Earth, I’ve gotten used to receiving tolerant smiles in response to my bursts of enthusiasm.

She was a pulpera, presiding, priest-like, over her altar: a counter displaying confites, coffee, plastic bags of baked goods. Behind her: milk, tuna, Salsa Lizano. the essentials of life. To her left and right, posters advertising canned jalapeños and Pozuelo cookes (Es… Muuuucha Galleta!). All around her, a halo of light from a single bulb hung just under the corrugated tin roof.

Costa Rica’s pulperías are fading from the landscape, unable to compete with the minisupers and larger chains that offer better prices, one-stop-shopping, and plenty of parking for the many Costa Ricans who now prefer to use their cars for all their errands. I’m sad that for my daughter’s generation of suburban josefinas, “Jale al Fresh” will probably be the phrase uttered most often, thanks to ubiquitous chains like Fresh Market and Vindi. For Costa Ricans older than she is or from smaller communities, the phrase is “jale a la pul” – let’s go to the pulpería. I’m not certain of the formal definition of a pulpería, but I’d say it’s a little store run out of, or at least adjacent to, the owner’s home. Sometimes there are aisles you can walk down; more often, you can’t touch anything that isn’t first handed to you by the owner.

I’ve never had a deep, life-changing friendship with a pulpería owner – or any friendship at all, for that matter – but there’s something about handing over your coins to the same person, week after week. Maybe I wasn’t in on the neighborhood gossip, but at least I heard slices of it, got a glimpse into the rich networks of family and friends that, anywhere else, were invisible to me. And somehow, I felt cared-for by the inquisitive eye of an older pulpero who, you could tell, was wondering what the hell I was doing there. It’s different to interact with young cashiers at ampm who are bored out of their minds.

Our pulperías aren’t gone yet, but I already miss the ones that have disappeared from my life or from their fast-changing neighborhoods. All those that remain are well worth celebrating, and, of course, supporting. I have some readers with memories of Costa Rica that go back years and even decades. I’d love to hear about the pulperías in your past.

And if you’re ever in need of a breath mint or a bag of papitas in San Pedro de Tarrazú – I highly recommend that you make that happen, by the way – you know where to go. Well, you don’t, actually, but just ask for the pulpería.

The startup that lets you shop Costa Rican small businesseses – from anywhere

Posted on February 10, 2020February 10, 2020 by stanleyobando

Last week I was thrilled to attend a presentation by the Costa Rican startup Local Keeps. Founded by Costa Rican-born Galit Flasterstein and her husband Eric Scharf, Local Keeps is an online store that allows small Costa Rican businesses to sell their wares to customers anywhere in the world.

I’ve interacted with a number of Costa Rican artisans and small business owners in the past and heard, “Ah, I’d love to sell online someday, but I have no idea how” – so I immediately understood that Local Keeps is filling a very necessary role for its “makers,” as it calls its product creators. Two of the makers joined Galit to speak to visitors from Travel with Ann and other students at Personalized Spanish in Trés Rios on Friday: natural cosmetics creator Adriana García and fruit jewelry genius Rosa Montealegre. Rosa is pictured below with her husband, Juan.

Yup, I said fruit jewelry, which has to be seen to be believed (and you can see it here): Rosa and her now 11-person team collect unsold fruit from farmer’s market and create incredible pieces from shaved mango seeds, dried banana slices and other things you could never have imagined as bright, gorgeous rings and necklaces. Meanwhile, Adriana, a one-woman show, whips up lotions and sugar scrubs that smell good enough to eat.

Galit explained that the mission of Local Keeps is not just to sell the work of these entrepreneurs, but also to help them grow. They give each entrepreneur a professional photo shoot and access to the resulting images, and are organizing regular get-togethers so that the companies can exchange ideas and receive support.

Going to the post office in Costa Rica is not exactly the easiest process, so I’ve often opted for U.S. online merchants when buying presents for someone back home – which is a shame, given the insane number of high-quality artisans and producers here in Costa Rica. It’s a relief to know I can just hop online and support them while getting the gift delivered anywhere. This post might sound like an infomercial, but that’s just how excited I am that someone is making this possible for Costa Rican microbusinesses and fans of Costa Rica from around the world! Thanks, Local Keeps. I can’t wait to see you grow.

The year of love has arrived!

Posted on January 6, 2020January 28, 2020 by stanleyobando

A big year in Costa Rican history has begun: the year that marriage equality will finally be the law of the land (on May 26, to be exact. That’s the day that the 18-month deadline set by Costa Rica’s Constitutional Courte for legislators to make marriage equality legal, will elapse; if they haven’t taken action by that date, the legislation prohibiting gay marriage will automatically be voided).

So for this first Monday of 2020, I’m full-on stealing an idea from my new Facebook friend Melissa Floress: celebrating (and tagging) everyone I can think of who is ready to help Costa Rica’s LGBTQ couples – or visiting couples – tie the knot in 2020. I know nowhere near as many people as Melissa, so I am simply reproducing her recommendations, but I would love to hear about the many additional businesses I know are out there who would love to help celebrate some very special and long overdue weddings in 2020! (You can also read more about LGBTQ-diverse businesses in Costa Rica through the Cámara Diversa.)

Event planning: Royal Eventos CR

Music: DJ Pablo Mena, Cimarrona Andree Perdomo J

Cakes: Palma Dulce Pastelería & Productos Gourmet, Angela Poppe

Makeup: Steph Zamora Maquillista, Andrey Ruiz

Decoration: Cindy Aguilar Madrigal

Flowers: Eli Arias

Food: Sylvi Ta, Pao Alvarenga de @Amarena

Clothing design: Kasandra Farrier, Andrea Gil

Spa packages for the wedding party: Lorena Herrera

Photography: Susan Alpizar

Master of ceremonies: Sofia Porras Aguilar

Notaries: Sue Mey, Laura Castro (Laura can provide services in English)

Hotels for the honeymoon: Casitas Tenorio (Bijagua), Hotel Kasha (Caribbean)

Who am I missing?