And moving to other news, Karl H Menzies has been Belize's favorite business to shop for a wide selection of quality wines and paints. But after 53 years, they're moving from a brick and mortar storefront and going online to provide an array of services.
It's a big change - and one that's indicative of an evolving retail environment where many traditional brick and mortar businesses are crowded out by competitors who can access cheap product at high volumes.
But Karl Menzies is evolving with consumer trends, especially since their website "BelizeOn", has been in operation for the past three years.
Today, their marketing manager explained what's in store for them. Courtney Menzies has this story.
Karl H Menzies - it's been around for over five decades, but after all this time, it's closing its doors…
Physical doors, that is, because the company is joining the digital world by closing its storefront and bringing its other service, BelizeOn, to the forefront.
Yanik Flowers, Marketing Manager
"I think when we think about legacy Belizean companies, the first name that comes to mind is Karl H Menzies. And Karl H Menzies has been serving the Belizean community proudly for the last 53 years in the paint and alcohol industry. And this physical closing of our storefront doesn't represent a closing for us, what it represents is a transformation and a transition into a more digital world, what's happening in tandem with the global digital shift around the world as well."
"Karl H Menzies was founded by Dorothy and Karl Menzies in 1969, so when we say legacy company we really mean a legacy but what's important to note that these 53 years that we've become experts in logistics and retail and delivering, when you see our BelizeOn trucks and when you see our ecosystem, know that those 53 years of expertise are behind his new company that we're bringing to the forefront now."
But why the shift? Flowers explained that Belize is moving to an electronic ecosystem, and they decided to move with it.
Yanik Flowers, Marketing Manager
"What we found is that Belize is going through a transition right now and so what we have to do is we have to get along with that transition and we have been in this ecosystem for the past three years and so our products and a lot of our services have already been online and so we see it could be more profitable to keep the digital side of things running and so we are ready for that next step and what we want people to know is that we are doing a remodeling of the wonderful iconic location and that will be our new BelizeOn office and so it can even be where people can take their packages to get delivered countrywide."
And with BelizeOn, there are separate services you can access.
The first is the E-Commerce website, then there's the package and food delivery services.
Flowers explained more about how it all works.
Yanik Flowers, Marketing Manager
"We have out BelizeOn E-Commerce site and that has grown over the last three years to host over 2,000 products with over 100 local vendors selling those products on the site. We have our BelizeOn Dropbox which is our door to door delivery service and we've already invested in some fleet line boats to really handle our market so we're really excited about the investment and then like I said, our crowd favorite is our BelizeOn D'Way app and since our inception in March that has really take off and we have about 18 restaurants, all your local favorite restaurants on the site."
But if you're missing the wines and paints that Karl H Menzies provided, Flowers said that those will also be available on the website - so they're urging all their customers to join them in the digital world.
The app is available on both the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store.
