• TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras
Here in Honduras’s capital city, the new U.S. Embassy, after numerous delays, finally opened, and the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) is part of it, with a bigger store, a better location, and other improvements.
HISTORY
In August 2006, the Exchange opened its first direct-run store to serve a U.S. Embassy. The store supported U.S. State Department personnel as well as Department of Defense (DOD) members.
The store was small — 400 square feet — and although it was on the second floor, the building’s geography made it look like it was in a basement, limiting foot traffic.
The embassy building itself, built in 1950, needed an upgrade. As far back as 2016, plans for a new, larger embassy building were in the works. Construction started in 2019 but was interrupted by COVID.
Construction picked up afterward, and the new embassy opened a few weeks back.
“The embassy building took years to complete,” said Rochelle Tolentino, general manager (GM) of the Puerto Rico Exchange, which includes Honduras.
“The Exchange was included in the plans from day one,” she said. “They wanted us to keep operating. It’s a beautiful building. It’s so modern, and it’s in a great location.”
Tolentino said that the embassy’s original plan called for simply moving the old store over to the new building.
“But during a visit last year, when I saw how beautiful the new building was, I felt we needed to be a part of that beauty,” she said. “We had a lot of support from [Eastern Region Senior Vice President] Bob White in approving having all fixtures meeting new standards. So I thank him for doing that.”
South East Region Vice President (VP) Tony Pares also provided support, and similar backing came from other directorates, including Real Estate’s Facilities Management Office (FMO), Information Technology (IT) and Merchandising.
IMPROVEMENTS
Store manager Luis Rivera, a Honduran local national who has worked for the Exchange for 35 years, said the new store features several improvements.
“The floor space is about 200 square feet larger,” Rivera said. “In the old embassy, we didn’t have a stockroom. Now we have a nice stockroom so we can keep merchandise on-site.”
Rivera noted that the new store is on the fourth floor, where it is near a cafeteria, a Honduran bank, a U.S. bank, a travel agency and other key areas, increasing the store’s visibility and foot traffic.
The Exchange will offer a coffee concession, Espresso Americano, a popular Honduran coffee shop. The embassy location will be a full-service store with seating.
“That’s a huge difference,” Rivera said. “At the old embassy, we had a kiosk in an outdoor garden. Honduras has tropical weather, so there was a lot of rain and heat. At times it was very hot, and during the rainy season, it was very hard to operate.”
Rivera said the embassy procured the equipment, which the vendor will maintain, so the Exchange did not spend anything on the shop.
SUPPORT
Radames Canales and Roberto Cruz-Gonzalez from FMO installed fixtures. Debbie Arseneau led an IT team also consisting of Jose Kuilan, Puerto Rico end user computer technician (EUCT); and Sherman Reynolds, an EUCT from Fort Knox, Ky.
Four associates from the Soto Cano AB, Honduras Exchange, about 65 miles away, also helped get the store ready.
“They got it done in less than two weeks,” Tolentino said. “And that was with restraints, because we were not allowed to work beyond the time frame given to us and on the weekends.”
“There were challenges,” Rivera added. “The embassy has a lot of security procedures, so they needed escorts, they needed guards, they needed permits. It was difficult, but we understand that security comes first.”
OTHER CHALLENGES
Rivera said that other challenges include customs and transportation.
“Our lead time is now set to 50 days from the Dan Daniel Distribution Center,” he said. “We have to go through regular import, with the exception that we don’t pay taxes.
“There are many things involved in this process. SDDC [U.S. Army Military Surface Deployment & Distribution Command] moves the cargo to the main base in Soto Cano. Then we have to transship the merchandise to the embassy store.”
But he said that moving the merchandise into the store is a lot easier.
“The old embassy had a very narrow parking lot and we had to move merchandise by hand,” Rivera said. “The new embassy has a better parking lot, a loading dock and freight elevators, so it’s lot easier for us to move merchandise in and out.”
STORE ASSOCIATES
The store has one full-time associate: Annex Manager Marlly Maldonado, a local national from Comayagua, near Soto Cano AB, who travels to Tegucigalpa to work at the embassy store during the week.
Rivera also runs the Soto Cano store.
The trip from Soto Cano to Tegulcigalpa used to involve driving unpaved roads in mountainous terrain, but the completion of a highway a few years ago has made the drive easier.
Getting around Tegucigalpa, a city of about 1.6 million, is now the main challenge.
“It’s a two-lane highway, but you spend more time in Tegucigalpa getting to the embassy than you do traveling to Soto Cano,” Rivera said. “The traffic is crazy, and not everybody obeys traffic signals.”
EMBASSY EXCHANGES
Only a handful of U.S. embassies — including those in London, Cairo, Dubai and Doha, Qatar — feature Exchanges.
Tolentino said the Embassy in Honduras appreciates having one.
“When I went there last April to see the building, you cannot imagine how happy they were to have the Exchange there,” she said. “They were so proud to be identified as one of the few embassies that has an Exchange. They made us feel valued.”
EARLY RETURNS
The Merchandising Directorate (MD) evaluated sales to determine assortment and maximize space. Although the store soft-opened in early March, Tolentino said that was while the embassy was still largely unoccupied and people were just trickling in.
“Our first real day open was March 28,” Tolentino said, “And we did almost $2,500 in sales, which was more than we had planned for, so we feel like we’re starting off on the right foot.”
Plans for a grand-opening ceremony are tentative.
Source: AAFES
Edited by Larry Lapka
