Innovation

"The affection and dedication that they put in their work makes them women of great heart." - Toks Restaurant

Mexico is a country with great diversity, rich not only in ecosystem, vegetation, and culture, but also in gastronomy and natural foods. Foods include golden syrup honey, traditional chocolate brought from Sierra Morena, the sweet jam of the Central Sierra de Guanajuato, the flavor of the kitchen of Dona Yolanda, and the delicacies prepared by the women Mazahuas of San Felipe del Porgeso. These foods give the flavor that makes you feel at home, and this differentiates Toks Restaurant from other restaurant chains.

Currently, social responsibility is key to the positioning and transcendence of a company. Toks integrates entrepreneurship and sustainability into its management thanks to the Productive Projects program, which consists of a supply chain based on community providers.

The idea came up with a question from the founder of Toks, Ángel Losada Gómez: How can you bring the incredible flavors of the dishes that are in a market or road, which only some can enjoy, to the restaurant industry?

The first idea was to go to a community of five women in Oaxaca who had not finished elementary school to sell the recipe and start producing it. This idea was discarded, as this process of industrialization would cause the product to lose its original and unique taste.

The second option was to bring these women to the city in order to produce all the necessary infrastructure, machinery, and equipment, but the artisan and natural flavor is due to the fact that the women are with their family, people, and place of origin. Moving them would destroying all the root and meaning, transforming it to a different environment when entering another place.

Toks chose to integrate these foods into their menu (honey, mole, jam, chocolate, and granola). They would be supplied by indigenous communities so that their customers could try them and enjoy the exquisite natural, original, unique, artisan, and unconventional flavors that Mexico has. In this way the company would become the main buyer, helping improve the quality of life in the communities, and at the same time would generate a competitive advantage where customers would not accept another restaurant.

Inspiration

One day after a long trip, the sons of the founder of Toks decided to make a stop to eat. They arrived at a modest stand since they were caught by the beautiful place. When they were in the restaurant they began to order; when they received their regional dish, they saw the color combination and it seemed very attractive. When they started to consume it, they fell in love with the flavors. "It was typical flavors of the region, freshly made."

They dreamed that it would be a success if the recipes for these foods reached the kitchens of Toks and more people could taste this regional flavor and home for which Mexico is recognized. With this inspiration, they used various techniques to reach Toks’ kitchens.

Overall impact

When we go to a restaurant, we do not expect much. The customer sits, consumes their food, and returns home. This does not happen at Toks. Toks made the change and applies social responsibility on a day-to-day basis.

When Toks buys those products from the communities, the meaning is shown in the transformation and impact that Toks managed to cause in the lives of these women. These women did not even finish elementary school, and now they are running their own business, learning about technology and sales.

Business benefit

Everything that this project gives as a benefit to the company is found in the products. Each bottle of jelly, each chocolate bar, each serving of granola tells its own unique story that most of us do not even bother to know about. This is what Toks focuses on: the humanistic touch of this project. However, we cannot deny that when Toks puts their products in competitions, it is satisfactory when they win quality prizes because that proves that the vision that was established in the beginning, of keeping and serving their products with their unique flavors and keeping the tradition of the country, has been accomplished.

This innovation arose out of a thought and a decision that triggered a series of events, like the transformation of these women's lives and changes in the food industry. Now we see that all these benefits and impacts are coming to the customers. Since the quality in those products is very impressive and like no others we have ever tried, it is not shocking that there was a high demand for these products, and the love of the customers was reflected in their consumption. This led to a very important decision in the history of Toks, which was opening a line of these products to the counter. This produces a very high income, which was not contemplated. For all this and more, we see that the benefit is win-win in aspects like economic growth, value added to the company, cultural change, and changes of life for women who develop the products.

Social and environmental benefit

The benefits the innovation brings through these productive projects are huge. Toks Restaurant’s collaborations with the five different native groups makes big companies focus on social and environmental responsibility. These productive projects benefit the communities by letting them sell their products (honey, mole, jelly, chocolate, and granola) in Toks Restaurant chains. Besides this, the company is also buying the products directly from the community, using them daily in their food to bring this high-quality and handmade experience to customers every day. Collaborating as a native group or a community in need with Toks bring even more than that: these restaurant chains also help the community start their business by providing special training in which they can learn about new technologies and financial control in order to keep their business running. Also, Toks donates new infrastructure to them so that they have the capacity to produce huge amounts of product for their restaurants, keeping its homemade taste. In the “Santa Rosa” jelly project, women had only studied until elementary school; now they can send reports about their financial status, check their income and expenses, and even use social media to keep in touch with Toks Restaurants. Besides this, they had no secured income before; now they produce 8 million pesos for the restaurant, changing the lifestyle of these women completely.

On the other hand, the environment plays a key role on these productive projects too. With the honey product, Toks is planting special trees and flowers to prevent mudslides in mountains; on the other hand, this special flora is helping the bees stay healthy. This restaurant chain also makes sure every productive project counts with its own organic and environmental certificate; if the community does not have one, Toks helps them start a project qualified for this certificate. An example is a water catchment process they made for the native groups to reuse water. In the last months, Toks has been working on a coffee project, where they increase vegetation with coffee trees and decrease deforestation. This is reducing the processing of coffee beans from 100 bags to just 10 of them.

Interview

Ricardo Fuentes Unzueta, Social Responsibility Manager