Today, after two days of clouds, the beautiful sunny weather that welcomed us to Santiago on Sunday returned. We enjoyed the return to clear skies, but we did a good amount of walking and the sun did get quite hot at times. First, after a long metro ride followed by another 20-30 minutes of walking, we arrived at the offices of Coca-Cola in the Las Condes area. This business district has many modern office buildings and high-rise apartment buildings and more open spaces and greenery than the part of the city where our hotel is located, so it has a very different feel. It also appears that this area is not frequented by foreigners, because we drew a lot of attention as twenty-two people from the U.S. filing down the sidewalk, wearing business clothes in the hot sun.
At Coca-Cola, we attended a very thorough and informative presentation by Francisco Rocca, Senior Operations Manager. In our discussion we touched on many topics, including the marketing of different sized bottles to specific demographics, the relationship between Coca-Cola and its three bottling groups in Chile, and the recent growth in the water and juice markets. Students asked questions on a wide variety of topics, based on their individual interests and on the topics they are working on for their Emerging Economies final project. One area about which students were curious was the effects that the 2010 earthquake had on Coca-Cola. Francisco explained the damage done to bottling plants in the affected areas and the process of restoring operations. All in all, we learned a lot of new information about a brand we are very familiar with in general by delving into the specifics of Coca-Cola's presence in Chile. And a fun bonus was that we were able to help ourselves to a variety of cold Coca-Cola products. Some of us went with old favorites, while others tried products that were new to us, due to them not being available in the U.S.
After the Coca-Cola visit, we conducted our daily reflection session and then had time for a break before our next business visit. We walked to the very large and modern Parque Arauco mall, where we had lunch and had some free time to buy gifts for friends and family (or ourselves!).
After our break, we walked to our next company, Latitud 90, which specializes in outdoor education and adventure tourism. We met with Felipe Howard, one of the company's founders, who explained that their programs fall into three main categories: outdoor education for students, trips for corporate groups, and trips for traditional tourists. Felipe spoke at length about entrepreneurship and the risks and challenges that are involved. He discussed the importance of making mistakes and learning from your failures as an entrepreneur, a point that was also stressed by our hosts at Start-Up Chile and Recycla. Felipe gave specific examples from the development of Latitud 90, explaining that the company originally planned to offer adventurous travel options to Chileans that would take them to other parts of the world. However, there was not a large enough clientele interested in such trips, and so the subsequent decision was made to focus their programs on Chile, given that it is their area of expertise.
Tomorrow is our last day of business visits in Santiago, and then we are headed to Valparaíso on the coast on Friday. This week is going by too quickly!
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