cigar boom has left out one important segment -- the people who make the cigars."
All but one of Caribbean's 25 rollers are native Cubans. Some have been in the U.S. for years, rolling in small back-room factories in Miami. Others are immigrants who are happy to find work in the trade they learned in Cuba.
Typical of Caribbean's new breed of rollers are Carlos Miyaras, 23, and Isabel Lopez, 22, both from Cuba. They work as a team -- he bunches and she wraps -- and they are saving their money to marry in a traditional Catholic ceremony. The couple met when they worked together making cigars in Havana's La Corona factory. Each has been rolling for about a year and a half.
"Making cigars is a very good way to make money," Lopez says through a translator.
"We are very happy here."
 iyaras came to the U.S. in July 1995; Lopez followed two months later. They relied on the trade they learned as apprentices in Cuba to earn their living in this country. Caribbean is Carlos' third Miami factory employer. "We are young, yet we still take a lot of pride in our work," Lopez says, "We often compete to see who can make the best cigar." Miyaras, who also enjoys painting pictures, feels that cigar-making is special. "Basically, cigar-making in an art form," he says, "And I like to make art." Each roller specializes in one kind of cigar, made from either the Santiago Cabana, Havana Classico, or Calle Ocho blends. "Specializing is how they get good at nailing the blend and the consistency," Doyle says. On the average, each roller makes between 100 and 125 cigars a day. Some, however, are proficient enough to average 200 a day. Tobacco is stored in bales in a small non-humidified room adjacent to the rolling floor. A floor foreman provides each roller with the tobacco for the blend that he or she will use for the day. Wrapper leaf is prepared by a team of women who strip out the center stem and make sure the two halves of the leaf are moist enough to be pliable. Finished cigars are bundled neatly and placed on a small shelf at the front of the workbench. At the end of the day cigars are weighed and placed on color-coded trays in a humidified storage room. Tobacco scraps are collected at each roller's bench, shredded, formed, and hand-wrapped into a rum-flavored, short-filler cigar called the Rum Runner, which sells for $2 in three sizes. "We mail order a ton of them," Doyle says. Caribbean takes care to keep the retail and manufacturing operations separate. "We are very careful to protect the retail end of things," Doyle says. The company's three stores pay the same wholesale prices that other retail customers pay. If customers call for the factory to order, they are quoted retail prices. That protects the three | Caribbean Cigar outlets and Caribbean's other retail customers. Staff at the factory fill mail orders and sell cigars retail from an on-site humidor.
Caribbean plans to make a public stock offering this summer, "We are looking for rapid acquisition and we plan to open at least two more factories," Doyle said. Retail stores are also planned in high-tourist areas outside Florida. Locations such as Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City are also being considered. Doyle plans to assign on-site cigar rollers to each store Caribbean opens. "It never ceases to amaze me how people react to seeing cigars rolled," Doyle says, "Even people who have seen cigars being made before huddle around the rollers. It's so powerful." He adds, "The key to our rapid growth is the people we've hired." And he's not shy about breaking with convention. Caribbean recruited Gail Ritt, a 26-year-old who worked in a cigar store in Chicago, to manage the South Beach store. "She can definitely hold her own with any guy," Doyle says, adding "and she knows her cigars." Doyle says he is uncertain what has caused cigar smoking's new found popularity, but he expects it to continue. "I'm as confused about it as anybody," Doyle said, "The popularity of cigar smoking is in part political, a backlash against the anti-smoking attitudes, and part the consumer returning to the basics. A cigar is a pretty basic item. And there are networks of support -- cigar dinners, cigar clubs, and shops that are coming back with new product." "People today associate cigars with high living," said Doyle, "It all relates. I am aiming at the more educated cigar smoker. This is a person who probably reads the tobacco magazines and knows what goes into making a premium cigar; he is aware of the subtleties. We are totally handmade in America by Cuban rollers -- people who made the Cuban cigars that people in the United States can't get. Our customers know that our cigars aren't just another Dominican brand." |
- Click on the button to turn to the first page of this article.
