Food Consumption Patterns Part 2

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11. Conclusion and Recommendations
The reality of the Haitian market in prepackaged ready-to-eat foods is that the industry is
unregulated. The government has laws and claims to enforce them but there is zero (0)
enforcement. The market is also monopolized by a small number of elite local businesses. These
businesses are protected from foreign competition by the veneer of government legislation and by
their knowledge of and connections inside what is essentially an informal and closed system. They
also have a distinct economic advantage over any outside competitor that ‘plays by the rules.’ We
can conclude from reported tariffs collected at the ports that they pay either no taxes or
substantially less than would be legally mandated. Competing with these entities may be
impossible. But there are prospective points of entry and advantage that an international social
enterprise entering the market can use to its advantage.
Getting past the Elite Merchants
There are three ways to get around the elite national enterprises that dominant the market and to
get through the labyrinth of informal government obstacles that gate keep:
1) partner with one of the local distributors,
2) leverage the role of international social enterprise that has humanitarian goals-- getting
RUFTs to hungry children—using appeals to and contacts within embassies, high levels of
the Haitian government, the UN, and NGOs to level the playing field,
3) both partner with one of the local distributors and leverage the status of social enterprise.
The success of either strategy depends on publicity.
Publicity
Popular Class Haitians are highly sensitive to suggestion and rumor and, very importantly, the
population tends to respond to information in an unified, integrated and reactive manner. The
extremity of the point was highlighted in 1998 eclipse when warnings on the radio not to look at
the sun during the ## minutes of the eclipse became a veritable panic. On the day of the
eclipse one would have been hard pressed to find a dog in the streets. Virtually the entire
2.5 million population of Port-au-Prince barricaded themselves in their homes for the
entire day. Many stuffed papers and sheets in all the cracks to prevent any sunlight
from entering the home. At least 5 people died from suffocation because they so
thoroughly sealed their homes they cut off the oxygen supply.
Some advertisers have managed to take advantage of this tendency for rumor
and herd mentality During the 1980s and 1990s, in the collective mind of
popular class Haiti, malt beverages became a “fortified” food. The campaign
was so effective that malta ranked 27 in the Most Nutritious Food Survey
conducted during the course of the research, several notches above Akamil—the
fortified bean and grain formula introduced by international nutritionists and NGOs
during the 1960s. Energy drinks have also managed to get themselves a place in the top thirty