A private venture will take over the culinary offerings in one of the most iconic spaces of the Special Municipality.
The Mipyme Hakuna Matata, a family business of the Carmenates family, signed an administrative contract with the Trade Company of the Isle of Youth to manage production and sales at the local Coppelia.
Under a cooperative production scheme between the state and private sectors, the mipyme will make ice cream, yogurt, cheese, and other dairy varieties available to the residents of Isla de la Juventud in the coming days.
The establishment is currently undergoing a preparation phase: painting work is being carried out, as well as cleaning of the lounges and green areas, and refurbishment of the restrooms prior to reopening.
Hakuna Matata SRL was approved on May 5, 2025 and is registered primarily for the production and retail sale of food, beverages, and tobacco.
The company is already operating in the Isle of Youth with a presence in the Day and Night space, located on the boulevard of José Martí Street in Nueva Gerona, where it has stood out for the quality of its products and the professionalism of its team.
This agreement comes more than a year after the Coppelia in Nueva Gerona reopened in March 2025 with a very limited menu: only on weekends, with a limit of two specialties per customer and no option to take ice cream home.
The partnership between Hakuna Matata and the state trading company fits into a trend that has spread across several Cuban provinces in 2026.
The Coppelia in Sancti Spíritus reopened last June with the support of a local small and medium-sized enterprise, while similar restorations were reported in Trinidad and Cienfuegos during the same month.
One of the earliest instances of this model dates back to 2022, when the micro, small, and medium-sized enterprise Helados AlasK began supplying Coppelia in Matanzas with 300 tubs daily of 240 milliliters through an agreement with Mercabal.
The legal framework supporting these associations was formalized with the Decree-Law 114/2025, published in the Official Gazette on March 3, 2026, and effective from the beginning of April of that year, which regulates for the first time the alliances between state entities and private SMEs in Cuba, enabling four modalities of collaboration.
The inability of the State to sustain these culinary spaces has turned the private sector into the main engine for their revitalization, a shift that reflects the worsening economic crisis the Island is facing after decades of centralized management.
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