Case of success: La Cuina de la Iaia and its gourmet croquettes

La Cuina de la Iaia: the company

La Cuina de la Iaia is a Catalan company dedicated to the making and commercialization of gourmet croquettes for the most demanding palates. In short, a young family-run company, whose manager is a curious and innovative chef, who constantly develops new flavours with which he keeps seducing his customers. Without doubt recipes, that are different and surprising and that leave no one indifferent.

Gourmet croquettes: The preparation process

La Cuina de la Iaia develops handmade gourmet croquettes for which it selects the best ingredients and raw materials: products with outstanding quality of which some have designation of origin (DO). In addition, the cooker works at the necessary pace to preserve the original taste of the gourmet croquettes. Furthermore, its batter is a special batter that gives the gourmet croquettes a crunchy touch, even hours after cooking. The croquettes are frozen after processing in order to preserve their taste and aromas intact, while at the same time allowing for an optimal consumption date of 12 months. The percentages of the main ingredients are very high so that they provide an intense and characteristic flavour.

A this time, La Cuina de la Iaia offers its croquettes for the hotel and catering industry (HORECA) in three formats:

– normal (25gr)

– croquetón

– mini o còctel.

These classic tapas are served in the best Spanish hotels, restaurants and caterings.

The product range

At the present time, the flavours offered to the customers are:

– Roasted chicken
– Ham
– Spider crab
– Cod
– Cod, orange and sesame
– Mushrooms with goat cheese
– Cabrales with caramelised onion
– Pepper with olives
– Spinach with pine nuts and raisins
– Vegan: onion and carrot
– Pizza
– Chocolate with Orange
– Sobrasada
– Foie gras and mushrooms
– Black pudding and mushrooms
– Emmental and bacon
– Prawns
– Gorgonzola and walnuts
– Chicken curry

The fair Alimentaria as international stepping Stone

Our client La Cuina de la Iaia started working with us a couple of years ago. Above all, the challenge of the project comes from the fact that it is a frozen product that is logistically difficult and expensive. During this year, they informed us of their participation in Alimentaria 2018 and asked us for an agenda of international meetings, as well as the accompaniment at the fair.

Barcelona Export was in charge of preparing an agenda of scheduled meetings at the stand during the days of the fair, as well as managing the agendas of contacts from Alimentaria’s matchmaking. Hence, we organised the commercial documentation and wrote the contact e-mails and invitations to the fair.

The five countries we chose for our search of importers/ distributors of frozen products were: Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. By using the matchmaking of the exhibition Alimentaria, we also contacted importers from many more countries.

As a result, La Cuina de la Iaia came to the fair Alimentaria with an agenda of 31 scheduled meetings in the course of the 4 days of the exhibition.

Results of the international commercial prospection

All in all, we are very pleased to be able to confirm the great success of La Cuina de la Iaia’s participation at Alimentaria 2018. During the event, more than 3,300 croquettes were cooked and tasted by the visitors who came to the stand. Its delicious croquettes, together with the prospecting efforts of Barcelona Export, resulted in a fair that ended up bringing 161 new contacts to our client.

So we accompanied our client at the stand to attend the meetings with potential clients from countries as diverse as: Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Panama, USA, El Salvador, Guatemala, UK and Libya.

After the fair, we are writing the e-mails to thank for visiting our stand at Alimentaria and following up on your visit. In this situation, we have created a large database of potential importers and distributors of the 4th and 5th range of the HORECA channel, with whom they can begin to close commercial distribution agreements.

Thank you for this kind and tasty relationship! Your success is assured.