No milk, no ice-cream

Guinness fame ice-cream parlour in Venezuela shuts down due to milk shortage.

An ice-cream store listed in the Guinness World Records book for its 863 different flavours has become the latest victim of Venezuela’s economic crisis, reported Reuters.

“We are closed during the season due to shortage of milk,” the famous Coromoto ice-cream store in the highland town of Merida announced on its Facebook page.

Coromoto is known for offering more than 860 ice-cream flavours and has even been recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as having the most flavours in the world — although only around 60 to 75 are sold each day.

The ice-cream store is located in the city of Merida in the Venezuelan Andes, is the latest to fall victim to the country’s economic woes, stated the website for BBC News.

Locals confirmed that the shop, hugely popular among tourists for its exotic and strange flavours ranging from beer to beans, had been closed since Christmas Eve.

A sign on the door asked customers’ forgiveness “for not attending you due to the lack of milk.”

Venezuelans have been suffering acute shortages of basic goods, from toilet-paper to spare tires, all year due to an economic slowdown, the highest inflation in the Americas, and the impact of strict currency controls.

Several factors have contributed to the crisis such as the economic slowdown — High rates of inflation and strict controls on foreign exchange being major culprits.

Eukaris Castillo, one of the employees of the ice-cream parlour told BBC Mundo that the decision was made after several customers had complained that the flavours being offered by the shop were not as many, as they had advertised.

Therefore, Manuel da Silva, the owner of the shop decided to close the shop during the holiday season in an attempt to salvage the reputation of the store said Castillo.

The Castillo added that it was getting increasingly difficult to find milk in ordinary shops especially after the prices on the black market had also increased in recent months making it unprofitable for Coromoto to offer all its wide variety of flavours.

President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government on the other hand was of the opinion that the foes in Venezuela’s opposition and wealthy elite are exacerbating economic problems by hoarding and price-gouging in what he terms an “economic war” against him.

The shortages have been a source of annoyance for Venezuelans across the political spectrum and have contributed to a decline in Maduro’s popularity, with one prominent local pollster putting him on 24 per cent approval, which is less than half of when he was elected last year.

On the other hand, the socialist government of Maduro and that of his predecessors in office, Hugo Chavez, has also been accused by the opposition for mismanaging the economy for the past decade-and-a-half they were in office.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 30^th,  2014.

Like Life & Style on Facebook, follow @ETLifeandStyle on Twitter for the latest in fashion, gossip and entertainment.