Food Consumption Patterns Part 2

79
None of this is to say that Bongu, or rather Cristo S.A. is the sole company
marketing low price processed foods with questionable nutritional value,
questionable ingredients, and making questionable claims about being healthy.
The condensed milk market has at least five imported brands with
similarly inferior non-dairy ingredients, most of which laud their high
quality ingredients (Figure 29). Other products, such as “Vitamin Cookie
Sticks” from China, come with suspicious claims, too (see Figure 30).
Figure 39: A key ingredient in these
Vitamin Cookie Sticks from China are
“vitamins”-- whatever they may be
Figure 38: Most of the not-really-condensed
milks flooding into the country are imported.
Note that those originating in developed
countries such as Denmark and Greenland
have Whole Milk as a primary ingredient
But most interesting for the objective of understanding the Haitian market is that even though there
are only a handful of Haitian brands and packaging companies, importers of any product that
becomes a big seller in the popular market are likely to become a target of Haitian business
interests. Two classic examples are Extruded Corn Snacks and Energy Drinks
Extruded corn snacks, particularly what are known as chikos—specifically Chee Co, a brand of
the Haitian company Arlequin and suspiciously similar to Cheetos—took over the market from
Cheetos with a product that sold for 10 HG, 1/3 rd the price of Cheetos. Another Haitian
manufacturer Stanco has since replicated the product and captured the market with Chiritos (they
also make three other products: Bingo, Crazy Mix, and Anillos). Stanco succeeded by leveraging
its distribution and credit networks, incentives to redistributors (50 packs of puffs for every 1000
sold), and, more than anything, by offering and lower priced products: 5 HG. Typical of products
discussed earlier, Stanco claims to use “top quality ingredients” and boasts that its products are a
“great substitute to those greasy found elsewear” (sic). (see Stanco Website).
Figure 40: From Cheetos cool Cheetah, to Chee Co’s cute baby Cheetah, to Stanco’s not so
adorable Rat. With lower prices the Rat won the market.