Immigrants have succeeded in their own business

Selling fresh produce ... a way to prosperity for people who came to Spain, destitute

  • Zahraa in her store in Madrid.

    From the source

  • Don Frutta shops in Madrid.

    From the source

  • "Al Zahraa Frutas" produce their vegetables on their own farms.

    From the source

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When Zahra Aref arrived in Spain from Morocco in 1990, at the age of 26, she was cleaning houses and taking care of children.

Three years later, she met her future husband, Muhyiddin Azzi, in Fuenlabrada, southeast of Madrid.

He worked in the market garden, and later the couple used their own savings.

First a cafeteria, then a meat shop.

Finally, they opened a fruit and vegetable store in 2001, which brought them success in the business world, and they named "Zahra" to their chain of stores.

Today, the "Zahraa Frutas" chain, meaning "Zahra Fruits," has 41 stores, almost all of them located in the Madrid area.

“My husband loves my name so much,” Zahraa says, jokingly from her spacious office at the company's headquarters in Grenion, 35 kilometers south of the capital.

The couple now oversee a small empire they built from scratch, generating annual revenues of 28 million euros and employing 250 employees.

This work is considered an exhausting job that requires long hours of work, from 3 in the morning until 10 in the evening, but it provided them and other immigrants like them, a stepping stone towards a better life in Madrid.

Several similar companies developed into chains of dozens of stores.

The main players in these empires are: “Al Zahraa Frutas” and the “Don Frutas” company, which also works in the field of fruits, and was founded in 2008 by three friends of Chinese origin;

And Dhaka Frutas, which was also established in 2008, is managed by the Bengali Alamin Miha.

The Spaniards are increasingly turning their backs on this type of business, due to the younger generation's lack of enthusiasm for such work, which they shun because of its arduous nature.

Zahra Aref and her husband managed to persuade their daughter Lamia, 24, to join them at work.

Lamia speaks four languages, holds two master's degrees, and is now the family business's chief financial officer.

It's very ambitious, and plans to keep opening stores in other provinces, in addition to moving into online sales, something that's kind of crowded her schedule in recent months.

Like her parents, she is conservative, although unlike them, she finally agreed to filming.

While the three are embarrassed by the media's interest in their success story, Lamia is proud of her parents and was able to convince them easily to tell their story;

She says she hopes their perseverance and success story will inspire others, who come to Spain with little of what they have to fulfill their dreams.

Motivation availability

Lamia says: “If I did not practice this work and someone asked me about the extent of success in it, I will tell him that it is unlikely that those who practice it will swear, but I saw it with my own eyes,” adding that she remembered this when she was actually accompanying her parents to the market garden in Greenion, At the age of three.

"I would encourage anyone with a project not to give up," she added, addressing immigrants, saying: "You can achieve what you want, if you have the motivation."

For fruit and vegetable entrepreneurs, the key to success was hard work but also expansion.

Until the turn of this century, there were no fruit sellers with dozens of stores.

But in the past 20 years, competition has become more and more difficult in this field.

The boom in immigration, too, brought many young people to Spain, who saw an opportunity in this sector.

The stores are relatively easy to set up, as they require little permits and little investment.

All that is needed is a place to rent, a set of scales and weights, and the will to wake up at dawn to buy fresh produce at the Madrid wholesale market.

The hardest part is staying in the store until the end of the day.

Larger companies have a competitive advantage.

With more stores, owners can buy more fruit from the wholesale market at lower prices.

It's not like buying 10 boxes of peaches, for example.

As a result, they have managed to survive in an increasingly difficult market, which has become within a world where there is more competition due to the transfer of large supermarket chains, to city centers and residential areas in the form of "fast" outlets, sometimes operating 24 hours a day. An hour a day.

There is no official count of fruit and vegetable stores in Madrid, but according to estimates by retailers' associations, there are about 2,000 in the Grignon area, and 1,300 in the capital.

Close stores

Due to the economic crisis, currently, most types of stores have closed their doors in Madrid, but new fruit and vegetable stores continue to appear in buildings vacated by other stores.

Many immigrants accept work in this field, hoping that they will gain experience and be fortunate one day in establishing their own business.

Fierce competition

If a fruit and vegetable dealer establishes a store near a chain of stores that deal in the same products, the competition may be too much.

But the larger companies have an unspoken agreement that respects each other's territories.

Miguel Saledo, general manager of Don Frutas, which boasts a network of 70 stores, buys its products from a 6,800-square-meter warehouse in Getafe: “I don't want to open stores near another group’s stores, because it could end in a war. Prices ».

Salido was working as an IT specialist in the Madrid market until 2010, when the three "Frutas Don" partners: Wang Xianyung, Zhou Yonghui and Yang Xiaobobo contacted him to work with them.

The three were in their twenties at the time, and they had just arrived in Madrid.

After 10 years, their turnover was 22.7 million euros.

"They succeeded in it," says Salido, 53, "through hard work. The three are lifelong friends. They went to school together."

There are few shops run by Spaniards, but even those few are considering leaving the business to pursue other fields.

"It might take up to two weeks from now to sell this shop, if someone comes with the money," says Giulio García Vivas, 57, who runs the "I Madre La Lavrota" chain.

He and his cousin, Alfredo Garcia, are third-generation fruit sellers, but they don't have anyone from the next generation, so he continues to operate in the 28 fruit and vegetable stores in Madrid.

Some veteran fruit sellers tried to make the business more attractive to their potential successors, by lobbying the Madrid Market Authority to change working hours, so that they could start as late as the next morning, but to no avail.

Because the authorities do not want the activity of food distributors on the road to coincide with the morning rush hour.

Vegetable production

In addition to fruit and vegetable stores, "Al Zahra Frutas" stores also engage in the activity of producing vegetables and fruits and selling them wholesale in a large warehouse in Greenon, where owners of restaurants and other stores come to buy fresh products.

Part of the vegetables and fruits are imported from Morocco, as Zahra's stores import their own watermelon from Agadir and Zagora in particular, and others grow it on several hectares of land on the outskirts of Greenon.

Muhyiddin Azzi's success impressed businessmen in the Madrid market from the start, as he clearly knew what he was doing.

"He is a reliable and diligent person, and this is very important for this field," says Andres Suarez, the official at the Union of Wholesalers in Madrid Market (Asumafruit).

The owner of the magazines of I Madri not Fruta agrees, and says: "The basis of this activity is serious work, and it is clear that no one has offered him anything on a plate."

Al-Zahra Aref says her husband recently had a heart attack, and he is now 63 years old, and is now working a seven-hour shift, allowing himself some free time to enjoy what he and his wife created.

Mohieddine Azzi's success impressed businessmen in the Madrid market from the start, as he clearly knew what he was doing.

Due to the economic crisis, currently, most types of stores have closed their doors in Madrid, but new fruit and vegetable stores continue to appear.

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