María Almenara: “The path has to be to internationalize the company”

After having received awards in the categories Marketing, Commercialization and Sales, for her project “From a traditional business to one of experiences” and in Customer Service, for her project “Designing Phugital experiences, María Almenara was recognized with the award for the Medium Enterprise and, finally, won the Grand Prize for Business Creativity 2023. El Comercio spoke with Carlos Armando de la Flor, general manager of the company.

They won the Grand Prize for Business Creativity, Medium Business, Marketing, Marketing and Sales and Customer Service. What’s the feeling?

As a company we are super excited. I think we have been doing things in an orderly manner, step by step, without rushing. We have been a company for 16 years, we have been a store for 6 years and I think everything has a process that we have known how to manage.

As a business family, I am extremely proud of what I have achieved in combination with my wife and the entire team of 409 people who accompany us.

As Peruvians, to be able to demonstrate to the market that we are a company and a brand that is prepared for great things.

What is the importance of companies having this ESG criterion?

The ESG issue is super important today because it helps us correctly manage our impacts because we are companies that have positive impacts, externalities that we must know how to manage.

The entire part of environmental management, corporate governance, sustainability is very relevant today, the planet needs us and it needs conscious capitalism.

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What were the projects in the categories that won about?

Customer Service is the transformation of our phygital stores, it is the third format that we release. We released a format that provides a digital and in-person experience for customers through a customer service totem and, in less than five minutes, we deliver the product. Additionally, through another window, we serve delivery applications and geolocate them in areas where they have very high demand and allows us to capture value in that entire environment.

Generate a new transformation process, a format leveraged in technology and data.

And the other award we won is for María Almenara as a concept. Having transformed a traditional business into one of experiences. We analyzed and saw that the market was extremely traditional in its proposal and the consumer was ready for something different. We took certain risks, we transformed our identity, we adopted the color red, we created stores with incredible formats, a sensory experience, leveraged on a lot of technology and data, with a lot of focus on our people and I think that This validates that we have done things well.

What’s next for the company?

The first stage of the company is this. Having achieved these awards helps to close a stage that has been to reach 15 stores, 409 workers, almost one million transactions in the year. This allows us to put a point and, next paragraph, the path has to be to internationalize the company.

The dream is to go outside of Peru, that is the plan, we want to continue making an impact in Lima, in the provinces, that is part of the day-to-day business, we want to continue growing in LimaWe have a lot of opportunity in Lima, we can triple the number of stores we have today and generate work and quality work for many people.

70% of our workers are women, 95% of the leadership is female, we work on many issues of female empowerment. The first milestone has been achieved, now we are going for the big dream.

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Finally, what is the importance of recognizing companies with this type of award?

Extremely important. Companies suffer a lot of loneliness because it is a complex environment, sometimes undervalued by the market.due to behaviors that have probably not been appropriate on the part of some businessmen, but I believe that we are with the new generation of businessmen to provide once again conscious capitalism, a focus on the human being in the collaborator and in our client, understanding the impact we generate and the impact, above all, in inspiring thousands of women.

In Lima, one in every 10 families has a member making self-sustaining pastries, that’s what María was like, in the beginning she was a girl who made pastries to support herself financially. Today she is a tremendous businesswoman and tremendous entrepreneur. My role is to support her in the business part of her and accompany her in that dream that she had since she was a child and I feel extreme pride and admiration for her and for her entire team.