The Marathon Day: Monday, May 12th

I went back upstairs for a bit to listen to my book and then hung out downstairs in the dining room with the rest of the group while we waited for the bus. We headed out around 9:20 to drive downtown to where we would meet with two of the companies, EMC & Ernst and Young. We collected in a large meeting room on the 7th floor and met with the Controller for EMC, a company that owns cloud computing companies such as VMWare. We had a brief break when we were able to go up to the roof to get a great panoramic of the city in my Glass. Next we met with a manager from Ernst and Young, a US based consulting and accounting firm, that has offices all around the world. We got to discuss some of the political and economic issues that Argentine and multinational companies have to face in doing business in the country. It was very interesting and we got a great perspective on what companies are facing in some trying economic conditions. 

We headed to lunch next at a restaurant just around the corner, Juana M. We had a nice lunch of empanadas and steak before we hurried off to our next meeting on the outskirts of town at Haus Brot. 

Haus Brot was the company that my group was assigned to. The company is an Argentine bakery that has almost complete vertical integration, meaning that the company owns every part of their supply, production, and sales chain. They own everything from the fields where they raise the wheat, to the milling machinery for the grain, the bakeries, and the shops where the goods are sold. They are even working to be able to produce their own milk and eggs for their baked goods. The reason they do all of this is so that they can ensure that their ingredients are 100% organic from the field to the bakery. We got to meet with their General Manager, who is the son of the founder. He gave a great presentation and then he gave us a tour of their entire production center. 

We even got to wear some sexy hair nets. 

They gave each of us an entire loaf of bread for the road. It tasted amazing:)

After the tour we headed back to town. I wasn't feeling well so I decided to skip out on the activity for the night and stay in the room. Hopefully I'll feel a bit better tomorrow morning since we have a very early day.