Mickey Lalli’s catering business started as a microenterprise. He had an idea, a partner and a couple thousand dollars to invest in the startup.
Four years later, Ocean Side Catering employs eight people, including a full-time chef. Lalli leases space with a kitchen, equipment and supplies. He owns a catering van. And he’s building a customer base through networking.
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“It does become word-of-mouth,” he said of Ocean Side’s marketing, because the company doesn’t have a budget for advertising. But he has hopes for reaching out through the Internet. “So many people surf the Web.”
Because of its success, the Newport-based catering business was featured last week at Rhode Island’s fourth annual MicroEnterprise Day, held in North Kingstown at the Rhode Island MicroEnterprise Association’s headquarters in Quonset Business Park.
The event was meant to “raise awareness of the microbusiness sector in our state and the role it plays as an economic impact,” said Ann Marie Marshall, director of the six-year-old association.
According to Marshall, a microenterprise is a business with one to five employees that needs $500 to $35,000 in startup funds.
There are about 80,000 microenterprises in Rhode Island, employing roughly 100,000 people, she said, citing statistics gathered by the Association for Enterprise Opportunity.
Since its inception, the association has trained hundreds of microentrepreneurs, said Kenneth Proudfoot, founder of the nonprofit. About 300 to 400 microentrepreneurs per year attend its four-week microbusiness training class, which is offered at sites across the state, and in Spanish, Portuguese and Creole as well as English.
Jorge Sanchez de Lozada said he has benefited since taking the class for the development of his business, Directorio Hispano, a statewide Hispanic Yellow Pages.
The idea came to him nine years after he moved to Providence from Bolivia in 1980, he said.
“I was trying to find someone to fix my chair,” Sanchez de Lozada said. “It’s very hard to find it in the Yellow Pages. I thought, ‘Why it is not in Spanish?’ ”
Sanchez de Lozada solicited some startup money from family members, he said, but most of it “came from my savings account.”
He spent long days making phone calls searching for printers, for businesses for the listings and for advertisers, he said. When the first book was published, in 1990, it had 16 pages. Now, the Directorio Hispano has 340 pages with full-page, glossy color advertisements. This year, 40,000 copies were printed and distributed.
Proudfoot said he is pleased with the progress made by the MicroEnterprise Association, which has an annual budget of $200,000, funded entirely by private donations. He also emphasized the accomplishments of the R.I. Youth Entrepreneurship Program, started about three years ago, to teach school-age children how to think like entrepreneurs.
About 400 to 600 students per year benefit from the program, he said.
Amanda David, 13; Emily David, 12; and Megan David, 9, attended MicroEnterprise Day to promote All For Apple Pies, a microbusiness they started baking homemade apple pies, to raise money so they can purchase two goats.
“We sell them at the end of our street,” said Emily David. They have sold two pies, at $8 a piece, in the last two weeks. The sisters are organized – they also have business cards and brochures, so people can order in advance.
Once they raise the money for the goats, said their mother, Lisa David, the girls plan to use the goats’ milk to make soap and cheese, so the goats will pay for themselves.
“We’re helping people become economically independent,” Proudfoot said. “We are equipping people with a set of portable, usable skills.”
