The residents of Ciudad Morazán are excited to have a new café recently opened in a prime location in front of the central park! It’s a terrific spot for people to meet for small gatherings or larger groups that can expand to picnic tables in the park.

The café’s owner, Ursula Alejandra Frederick Soto, recently moved to Ciudad Morazán. She loves coffee and thinks it is essential to getting a good start on the day. She saw the opportunity to offer delicious coffee to the community’s people at a reasonable price. The first customer paid for his coffee with eLps, the lempira-based stablecoin, using Raipay.

Ursula serves coffee and pastries for those who get up early and go to work without having time for a full breakfast. The café is like Starbucks but for a fraction of the price. Even better than Starbucks, the coffee and pastries are served with an excellent presentation and great service.

Ursula is already expanding the menu for new demand. She advertises specials every day in the local Telegram group. She continually asks her customers for feedback because she wants to keep expanding her food offerings. Long-term, she would like to add Karaoke in the evenings.

• 

• 

The décor is beautiful. She can produce an ambiance of a much larger café by using the big screen TV. She can create different looks for different times of the day.

• 

• 

The TV also allows her to do events like the TV night for the kids. She didn’t charge a dozen kids to watch the movie on her big-screen TV, but they had to buy something to eat or drink. They were delighted with that.

Ursula wants to encourage children and adults to read more, so she provides books for both to read in the café. She also has two couches for people to sit and read. There is even a table that children can use for doing lessons.

Ursula has business experience because she started a clothing store in Choloma when the pandemic threw her and her mother, a schoolteacher, out of work. Unfortunately, there was too much danger in Choloma for her business to survive. She had to pay protection money to the gangs to leave her alone. The municipality also came around for their payoff. Then the gang members started brazenly stealing her merchandise. She couldn’t say anything when they walked out with clothing without paying.

In Ciudad Morazán, she works from home as a scheduler and is using the extra bedroom in the house as her office, so she is always available for the café in case of emergencies. She has gotten her regular work done while operating the café.

Opening the restaurant required a significant investment, even without the standard costs of starting a business in Honduras, which is both slow and expensive. She and her mother purchased the furniture, and she took out a loan for the beginning inventory. Due to the rule of law in Ciudad Morazán and her high industriousness, she was able to get a low-interest (for Honduras) loan to start her business.

 Her goal is to pay off the loan in six months. She is covering her costs but doesn’t expect to be profitable until after she pays off the loan.

With the café’s popularity, we hope she will make a well-deserved profit before that because the community appreciates her fantastic service.