One of the key functions of the Guyana Shop, as we understand it, is to serve as a display and marketing facility to raise awareness of the availability of some local products, mostly foods, beverages, spices and condiments as they become available. It does so by affording these products shelf space and promotional ‘push’.
It has been doing a reasonable job in that regard. Local consumers apart, its role as a ‘must visit’ location for holidaying Guyanese seeking to return to their homes abroad with ‘bits and pieces’ of Guyana in their suitcases is noteworthy. Foreigners visiting Guyana, too, have found their way to the Guyana Shop’s Robb and Alexander streets location, having earlier been ‘briefed’ on the reputations of particular local products and eager to get their hands on samples of those.
Since locally produced food items and other products must satisfy product quality criteria before they can ‘make’ the shelves of the more popular supermarkets and win consumer confidence, The Guyana Shop also offers a kind of testing ground, patterned after the concept of ‘creeping before walking’. Here, the facility offers, through its parent body, the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC), advice on the various facets of product enhancement.
