If you have a shop, you can be an entrepreneur too, without a doubt. It’s not only people who set up a tech startup who are entrepreneurs.
This post is dedicated to a true fighter, Celinda Garcés, owner of El Tirol Delicatessen, a small shop in the Prosperidad neighbourhood.
I met Celinda on my wife’s recommendation, when we discovered her little shop, somewhat tucked away but standing out for its wide range of gourmet products and especially wines, which are my passion.
Since my first visit to her shop I’ve been a loyal customer, not only because of what she sells but because of the excellent service she gives you. I began to learn a bit more about her story and included it as a small success story in my new book Quiero ser emprendedor (“I Want to Be an Entrepreneur”).
Why is she a true entrepreneur?
Celinda is a micro-business owner who doesn’t have two master’s degrees, isn’t under 30 and hasn’t set up a cutting-edge tech company in a business incubator. She opened a delicatessen selling cold meats, cheeses and preserves in 1984 in the Prosperidad neighbourhood. She was in her early twenties then, and now, at almost 60, she is still fighting and working with the same passion.
At one point she had 2 employees, but during the crisis in small retail, when the big chains such as Caprabo and others started opening, she had to cut staff.
To top it all, a year after she had her first child, her husband divorced her. A hard blow, but it hurt her even more to think of having to give up her business, and she fought to keep it.
Thanks to a friend of hers, a stockbroker, her business took a new turn. This was back in 1996. He told her it was a good time to invest in wineries in La Rioja and the Ribera del Duero, buying wine to sell a few years later. She didn’t dare to buy for lack of resources, but she did offer them her shop’s storeroom. What’s more, she could sell part of her friend’s wine and make a good margin.
From that moment on, Celinda immersed herself in the world of wine, went to food fairs and began making room for wines in her little shop. Today she is a real wine expert, with around 100 different labels, and she tells me she has tasted them all beforehand, so she knows what she’s talking about.
She talks to the wineries, researches the history of each wine and gives you a description that some sommeliers would envy. You may well go into her shop and come out with a mixed case based on her recommendations.
As she opens every Saturday, she has taken to organising winery presentations and tastings on some Saturdays to attract new customers or help her regulars discover new wines.
If you love wine and want to pair it with other gourmet products, be sure to visit her shop.
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