From surviving the internal armed conflict in Peru to creating Delicius

Rosa Luz Pallqui Medina will soon open its first pastry shop. After 10 years of starting his Delicius catering business in the garage of his family home, Now he is moving to Huachipa, which will be the scene of one of his main dreams: having his own place.

Rosa arrived in the capital from Huanta, Ayacucho, in 1986, fleeing one of the hardest moments that Peru experienced due to political violence. She was very young, she had a little boy who was only two years old and she had not been able to finish her studies in Education.

“After the disappearance of my husband (journalist Jaime Ayala Sulca) and my father, I came to Lima with my mother and my youngest son,” she tells us about her situation at the time.

“I had to work at everything, I have been traveling, I have worked in offices. Not having a title, it has been difficult for me to get ahead and support my son”, adds the entrepreneur.

Despite the difficulties, years later, he managed to study Pastry and Bakery in senatiHe also took courses at Cenfotur, where he decided, in 2013, that he was going to undertake. “First I only sold to friends, then I was able to cater for 200 or 300 people and for events for organizations like Amnesty International or the Red Cross,” she says.

Reactivation

The time of the pandemic was one of the toughest for many businesses, which had to stop their activities. For Rosa, the situation was just as complicated. “It was a setback because it was already in another stage of the business. He left me with nothing for several months, I went back to the beginning, selling in small quantities”, recalls Rosa.

However, now the reactivation is underway and the catering businesses are getting ahead. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), during 2022 an advance of 73.51% was recorded in these services due to the increase in face-to-face events by companies and institutions.

Along these lines, inflation in metropolitan Lima is another problem faced by businessmen due to the rise in input prices. In 2022 it closed at 8.46%, the highest rate recorded in the last 26 years. Likewise, in 2021 a rate of 6.43% was reached, the highest in 13 years.

Rosa tells us that when she started selling a cake, it was worth between S/10 and S/12, now it sells for S/25 or S/26. In addition, the hundred snacks cost up to S/30, and now it is around S/100. “When I started with my businessa kilo of butter cost S/5, today I buy packages of 2 kilos for up to S/33, it has more than doubled. Sometimes customers don’t understand that, they think it’s the same as it was before the pandemic, but everything has gone up, they have even tripled”, he mentions in reference to flour, oil, milk and sugar.

in search of justice

Rosa is a survivor of the internal armed conflict, and she tells us that when she has large orders, she hires women who are also victims of political violence as support. She continues to fight for justice, memory and fair reparation hand in hand with the Anfadet association, made up of 3,000 relatives of 500 victims. She is now waiting for a favorable sentence in the oral trial for the disappearance of her husband, the journalist Jaime Ayala, who disappeared at the Navy military base in 1984.

Data

Entrepreneurs. From March 4 to 5 they will hold an event for Women’s Day at the Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion.

Catering. Business advanced 25.57% in December due to Christmas and New Year events and dinners.