Founder, Crepes & Waffles
About The Leader
About The Leader
Beatriz Fernandez, founder of Crepes & Waffles, is an entrepreneurial woman who has inspired other women to excel and break the glass ceiling.
Beatriz Fernández is the creator of Crepes & Waffles, a 40-year-old restaurant chain with 80+ branches in Colombia and about 15 in various Latin American countries.
This entrepreneur has a profound dedication to social responsibility, hiring exclusively female heads of households and using environment-friendly ingredients, and has built a leadership style based on sensitivity, art, music, and poetry.
Her Purpose
Her personal philosophy of love transformed Crepes and Waffles into a vehicle of social transformation and led her company to become a Certified B Corporation.
Beatriz Férnandez is one an iconic name in the field of business in Colombia. Together with her partner, she initiated the Crepes & Waffles restaurant chain while she was a university student. At that time, the co-founders were already committed to the idea that Crepes & Waffles had to be more than just a good business.
They understood from the beginning that "If you reach the heart, you stay in the mind" and that is why they evolved under the principle of Fernandez' philosophy: "Feel good, do good, and do well."
Case for Change
Case for Change
"In our society, we have the challenge of continuing to create a gastronomic culture; with our people, the challenge is to have an internal transformation based on values and conscience so that everyone has a dignified life. With the environment, we continue to support projects to generate regenerative agriculture outcomes and support peasant communities. And with us, we must continue to have the responsibility of keeping our essence pure and intact, since that is where our strength lies."
Growth Gap
Growth Gap
"From the beginning, I understood that economy was not only the forces of supply and demand but the relationship of human beings with each other and with the ecosystem. That made us create a solid and clear vision, from which we based the development of this company that became the means that we were given to have an individual evolution."
Investment Portfolio
Investment Portfolio
“Being confident about out values, secure in our knowledge, attentive to rapid market changes, innovative to stay ahead, and able to follow our intuition is what led us to be a different company from the beginning.”
Her Leadership Qualities
Her Leadership Qualities
Fernandez's leadership style is based on sensitivity, art, music and poetry, and she has publicly said that she identifies herself more as an artist than as a businesswoman.
Creativity and Innovation
Creativity and Innovation
Fernández keeps the menu at Crepes & Waffles attuned to seasonal change, customer needs, and behavioral trends. She also leads the company in the involvement of projects that go beyond its core but that add to or complement its mission.
Key Actions
Key Actions
Fernandez focuses on delivering simple yet highly-satisfying dishes to consumers, researching societal and market needs as well as focusing on internal and external processes.
The experience of the consumer is the most relevant: its marketing strategy highly depends on word-of-mouth recommendations
Leadership Behaviors
Leadership Behaviors
Trust the process will bring results with consistency.
Listening attentively to customers and implementing changes that satisfy them.
Lesson Learned
Lesson Learned
Leaders should listen to what customers say (or don't say) and adjust continuously to deliver and increase value, whilst at the same time taking risks and surprising them.
Fernandez's business doesn’t fall easily into patterns, creating new value for her customers constantly.
People first
People first
In 2019 , Fernandez created the The C&W Arts Academy to generate learning and meaningful processes that transform the individual's relationship with herself, with others, and with the social and natural environment through art and methodologies based on the cultivation of integral consciousness.
Key Actions
Key Actions
Fernandez focused on offering tools for employees, who are mainly women heads of household, to explore their full potential as human beings. She went beyond technical skills and developed programs that dignify the lives of their employees, based on what she calls her great revolution, which is happiness.
Leadership Behaviors
Leadership Behaviors
Inspiring others to be better and do better
Building a strong workplace culture
Lesson Learned
Lesson Learned
Leaders recognize organizational health as a fast-track to performance improvement.
Fernandez focused on building self-leadership capabilities on her team that would directly impact their levels of performance.
She encouraged the extension of the Crepes & Waffles culture into home and work settings
Coherence
Coherence
Crepes & Waffles partners with international cooperation agencies, government entities, and the United Nations to benefit more than 1,500 agricultural families in rural areas affected by war and drug trafficking.
Key Actions
Key Actions
Fernandez built a sustainability strategy that extended her concern for the wellbeing of the workforce to territories and communities involved in the company’s supply chain.
She empowered small farmers from nine neglected territories in Colombia, buying directly from them at better prices than the local markets.
Leadership Behaviors
Leadership Behaviors
Defining success and doing things her way
Understanding the interconnectedness of all players
Lesson Learned
Lesson Learned
Rather than focusing on business, as usual, leaders adopt a business approach that involves building meaningful relationships with all stakeholders of the project they are part of.
Fernandez embedded her life philosophy of love into her business philosophy.
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