The cigar gained favor at the Retail Tobacco Dealers Association trade show in August in Orlando, Florida. "Miami Cigar wrote a sea of orders," Doyle says, "We calculated that it would take seven-and-a-half years for the rollers that we had at the time to fill the orders. I had a gut feeling that the little cigar business was becoming more than I had planned for."
Enter Mike Risely, a venture capital specialist from New York City, who rounded up enough private investors to allow Caribbean Cigar to expand by opening the factory. Caribbean moved to the factory on Eighth Street (Calle Ocho) in Miami's Little Havana in December 1995. The company also established a box factory, run by eight employees, in a building about a half-mile from the factory. Doyle had originally planned to hire 10 rollers initially and then add 15 more during the next two years. Demand for Caribbean cigars moved up the timetable so that by the following February,
| Doyle and Risely, the company's vice president, signed a lease to triple the factory's space and made plans to double the number of rollers. "This company is a freight train right now," Doyle says, "There's no factory as big in the United States." Caribbean pays rollers premium salaries and provides them with health insurance. They are also rewarded with ownership in the company based on their production. "We brought many of them into the system. They all feel more secure here, because we take care of them," Doyle says, "They come to work in a clean environment -- and they sit in ergonomic chairs."
The rolling benches are set up in four rows with six benches each in the brightly lit factories. Near each bench is a press into which bunched cigars are placed to take their shape. On each bench are one or more stacks of tobacco, some of which will be used as filler, binder, or wrapper. A thick rolling board, made of mango wood and specially ordered from Costa Rica, sits at each table along with the simple tools of the rolling trade -- a chaveta (an oblong cutting tool), a small bowl filled with pectin, which is used like glue to hold the cigar together, and a small tube the size of a woman's lipstick to cut the cigar cap from leftover tobacco. The room buzzes as the rollers talk to one another or quietly sing to themselves. Laughter often rises above the buzz. One woman's job | is to keep the workers supplied with their favorite beverage -- most often thick, sweet Cuban coffee served in a thimble-sized cup.
Caribbean rollers -- torcedores, in Spanish -- roll until they have reached their quota of cigars for the day. In addition to 25 rollers in Miami, two rollers, including Santiago Cabana, make cigars in the Key Largo store. Plans are to have on-site rollers in new stores Caribbean has opened in Miami's South Beach area and in Key West. Caribbean's success runs counter to the common wisdom that there aren't enough trained rollers available in the U.S. to make a consistent product, and that those who are here are nearing retirement. "Yes, a large part of our work force is aging," Doyle acknowledges, "But there also are young people coming into the trade. We are training rollers as well." Many of Caribbean's rollers grew up in the tobacco trade. "Their family did it. Their fathers did it," Doyle says, "Maybe they ended up in Havana in one of the factories. In Cuba, rollers are very well-respected. Rollers still have pride. They consider themselves artists. Our workers are easily the highest paid cigar rollers in the United States."
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aribbean's rollers are mostly male. Four women occupy the rolling benches, and two others, who have disabilities, roll cigars at home. "We deliver the tobacco to them and pick up the cigars. They are very good rollers. They make churchills and robustos," Doyle says.
