Tortas Dolly: From the home oven to the supermarket shelves

The owners of Tortas Dolly and business consultants from USAID's Business Center in Santa Cruz celebrate the introduction of the company's cakes into local supermarkets.

Alejandro López remembers his mom, Dolly Gómez, baking and decorating cakes since he was four years old, back in 1980. First she used the kitchen of their house as her bakery, then the ground floor. Finally, since Alejandro took over as General Manager in November 2004, their business has expanded to the two floors of what used to be their home.

Now, their business employs 54 people and has increased its sales 400% over the last 3 years. Once a hobby aimed at delighting family and friends, baking cakes has become a profitable venture and a full-fledged business requiring management.

When Alejandro approached USAID’s Business Center (BCCN2) in April 2006, Tortas Dolly was already a well-known company that sold its products directly to the public. However, he dreamed of taking it beyond. He wanted to see the cakes on supermarket shelves. He asked for assistance to take the company to large scale production. Today, after one year and a half of working with BCCN2, Tortas Dolly does not only have two products ready to be sold in supermarkets, but also a good manufacturing system that has allowed the company to offer products with longer shelf-life. Before receiving the assistance, the products had an average duration of 7 days; now they last 30 days—with no added preservatives. Thanks to BCCN2’s support, Tortas Dolly doubled its cake production in 2007 and will continue to expand opening new branches. In addition to that, in a process of constant improvement, BCCN2 helped Tortas Dolly obtain quality, industrial safety, and environmental certification from a certifying agency supported by the Bolivian enterprise supervision organization FUNDES. As a result of this assistance, Tortas Dolly entered the supermarkets on January 15, 2007 and a larger number of new clients have since then been able to purchase and taste Dolly’s traditional homemade-style cakes.

Alejandro Lopez, General Manager:
“The technical assistance provided by BCCN2 totally fulfilled my expectations and now I am joyful to see how our products are being sold, after passing the SENASAG’s (Bolivian Food Security Service) tests with optimal grades. Now we are offering a very safe product, which has a very long expiration date, more than we expected. We are ready to take off.”

Carolina, quality control:
“After receiving the technical assistance, we saw important changes in the employee’s habits as they now use uniforms and gloves correctly. Cleanliness has been the most noticeable change; everyone is now involved in cleaning everything thoroughly. There is a change of attitude among the personnel, which improves the quality of our products.”

This enterprise is so pleased with the BCCN2’s consultant that it has decided to keep him to develop an additional venture: the production of its own “dulce de leche” (milk jam). Currently, Tortas Dolly buys between 3,000 and 4,000 kilograms of milk jam, at an estimated cost of $5,200 to $6,200 per month.  They want to establish a new company, under the same business, to produce a milk jam similar in quality to the one they currently use. This company would supply milk jam to Tortas Dolly and to other similar business nationwide. Erick Rojas is the consultant in charge of developing the new milk jam factory.