Alternative Productions That Save

The Yumurí Specialties cookie factory, in the city of Matanzas, turned to alternative productions to fulfill its task of generating food, income, and preserving jobs.

Thus, they embarked on the path, for example, of making pizza and croquette molds using formulations that combine wheat flour with cassava — a process gradually perfected to obtain the best possible quality, explains administrator Yosvany Rivero González.

With charcoal and firewood, if necessary, the Yumurí chose not to stop and turned to these variants, now very popular with the people.

«Look at the line there; people always come early to take these foods home,» Rivero clarifies.

«We work hard, of course; an electric oven is not the same as this charcoal-based one. Since February, we have ventured into these productions and others, already extended to units of the Provincial Food Company, where they make fritters, pieces of papaya, or caldosa stew.»

Thanks to these initiatives, there are also economic results, and this opened the doors to receive the benefits of applying Decree 138, which raised salaries as an essential assurance for the creation of goods.

In recent days, worker Dilan Núñez Domínguez expressed gratitude for how income has grown and also for receiving profits every three months — amounts that, although still not sufficient, Rivero notes, are encouraging.

At Yumurí, the capital of innovation, they keep equipment from 1932 running, a testament to the talent of those who strive to preserve machinery, just as Ernesto Che Guevara requested in 1962 during his visit to the industry.

«For Che and Fidel Castro, on the centenary of his birth, we will not let this factory die, because we owe ourselves to the people,» Rivero stated.

Cover Photo: High demand for the pizza molds. Photo by the author.