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62
TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
MAY/JUNE 2012
Highlights from the
PROCIGAR FESTIVAL
2012
Name:
Benjamin Menendez
Title/Company:
Senior Vice
President, General Cigar
About him:
On November 26, 1960,
Benjamin (Benji) Menendez left
Cuba and his family’s Havana cigar
company—one of the largest in the
country. Like many of his generation
of Cuban cigar family heirs forced to
flee Castro’s regime, Menendez left
with virtually nothing of his family’s
wealth—nothing except the rich
knowledge ingrained in him from
childhood. “I was born into a tobacco
family, I was already hearing about
tobacco when I was in my mother’s
womb,” he says. Urged by his father
to get a college degree, Menendez
graduated and immediately headed
back to his family’s cigar company,
where he was indoctrinated in
virtually every area of the business.
“Selecting wrappers, labeling boxes,
rolling cigars, all of this I had to
learn,” he reflects. “I haven’t rolled a
cigar in 50 years, but learning how to
was a great experience.”
In Miami, Menendez spent some
time in sales for Philip Morris then
relocated to New York, where he
worked at a company that made
cigar-making
machines,
before
getting back into the cigar-making
business. In 1961, he started
Compania Insular Tabacalera S.A.
in the Canary Islands, where he
created Montecruz premium cigars.
“We started with four cigar rollers
in 1961, and when I left in 1976 we
had 700 people working there and it
was the No. 1 brand in the U.S.,” he
recounts. [He left the company a few
years after selling Insular Tabacalera
to conglomerate Gulf + Western for
around $7 million.]
On new beginnings:
Starting
anew, he and his brother Felix opened
a cigar factory in Brazil, but rampant
inflation due to the country’s fiscal
issues derailed their business.
“Inflation was astronomical—
we’re talking inflation percentages
in the hundreds, thousands—and
credit card interest of 30 percent
a month was normal,” he says. “So
I could lead a good life in Brazil,
but I could not step outside Brazil.”
Deciding to leave, Menendez was
hired by General Cigar in 1983, then
left there in 1997 to run factories in
the Dominican Republic, Honduras
and Nicaragua at Tabacalera, which
was absorbed into Altadis in 2000.
In 2003, he rejoined General Cigar,
where he and the team there created
an award-winning cigar that bears
his name, the Benjamin Menendez
Partagas Master Series Majestuoso.
More recently, Menendez helped
develop the new Partagas 1845,
introduced just a month ago.
On the future:
“I believe that this
industry will live forever; cigars will
be smoked forever. Cigars are a great
means of establishing relationships
and communicating with people.
The pleasure you get and the
relaxation you get from smoking
a good cigar is something that no
matter of legislation or taxation can
take away.”
Benji’s Cigar Beginnings