The energy crisis is forcing private businesses to discount ice cream, eggs, meat, and frozen chicken amid soaring inflation, while consumers turn to canned and dry goods.
14ymedio, Havana, Natalia López Moya, June 30, 2026 — The voice echoed off the peeling facades of Lawton as if auctioning off merchandise doomed to be lost. “A tub of ice cream for 1,000 pesos!” shouted a vendor this Sunday as he pushed a tricycle carrying an improvised cooler. Just minutes later he lowered the price: “Come on, now it’s 900!” The heat kept melting the product, and desperation was melting away the price. Before turning the corner, he made one last offer: “For 800, you can take four liters of delicious chocolate ice cream!” Every minute without a sale made the price smaller and the loss greater.
The scene sums up one of the less visible effects of Cuba’s energy crisis. While inflation continues pushing most prices upward, foods that depend on refrigeration have begun to defy that logic. Not because producing or importing them has become cheaper, but because preserving them has become nearly impossible.
Prolonged blackouts have changed the shopping habits of thousands of families. If a box of frozen chicken once seemed like a reasonable investment to cover a week’s meals, many now prefer to buy only what they will cook that same day. Having a full freezer no longer conveys security but concern.
If before it “was one of the best-selling products, now relatives abroad prefer to buy canned goods”
An employee of the digital platform Supermarket confirmed to 14ymedio that orders for “boxes of frozen chicken quarters have dropped tremendously in recent months.” If before it “was one of the best-selling products, now relatives abroad prefer to buy canned goods, dry foods, and perhaps a package of chicken, but they no longer take the risk of buying an entire box.” Instead, canned sardines, preserved foods, rice, powdered milk, and dehydrated meals currently top the list of most requested products.
“Customers first ask how many hours of blackout their family’s neighborhood is scheduled to have, but that schedule is almost never followed and the outages end up lasting longer,” the worker explained. “Many choose beans, cereals, or pasta because they know food that requires freezing will cause their relatives more problems than benefits.”
The phenomenon is also visible in agricultural markets. At Tulipán, one of Havana’s commercial barometers, where for weeks prices seemed to have no ceiling, an unexpected exception appeared this weekend. A carton of eggs dropped from 3,000 to 2,700 pesos.
“Neither customers nor we ourselves have any way to preserve them,” admitted a saleswoman at one of the kiosks while a blackout had already lasted twelve hours. She frequently glanced at the stack of cartons. “Before closing, we have to sell all of this because there’s no way to keep it.”
“There are days when we manage to save the merchandise by moving it from one unit to another, but when the outage lasts more than ten or twelve hours, we start losing it”
A few yards away, at another stall displaying meat products, pork loin remained at 1,000 pesos per pound, although it had reached 1,200 just a few weeks earlier. “This is for cooking today because it’s completely thawed, and nobody in this neighborhood has a refrigerator cooling anything at this hour,” complained a customer while feeling the meat before deciding whether to buy it.
The situation is hitting small private enterprises and family businesses especially hard. Many invested thousands of dollars in industrial refrigerators, display cases, and freezers that now spend more time turned off than operating. Maintaining a private generator is prohibitively expensive because of fuel prices, and not everyone can afford battery banks or solar systems, much less import fuel from the United States.
“Every blackout is a roulette wheel,” says Ernesto, owner of a small frozen-food business in Centro Habana. “Some days we manage to save the merchandise by moving it from one unit to another, but when the outage lasts more than ten or twelve hours, we start losing quality and then we have to sell quickly, even if it means lowering the price.”
The entrepreneur has opted to keep a board in his store listing the frozen products he sells while storing them in the freezer at his home, where he adds ice whenever the power goes out. “Since my house is above the little store, if a customer wants something, I go upstairs and get it. Keeping it downstairs on display is basically the same as throwing it away.”
“You can’t charge me 500 pesos for a Cristal beer that isn’t cold,” complained a customer at a café on Ayestarán Street
The market has begun rewarding products such as canned goods, dried beans, pasta, cookies, and powdered milk. Not only do they last longer, but they also represent a kind of insurance policy against an electrical system incapable of providing stability.
This shift in consumer habits is taking place while the National Electric System is experiencing one of its most critical moments. In recent weeks, the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant went offline again just two days after returning to service due to new breakdowns in the deteriorated economizer of its boiler. The shutdown once again pushed the projected deficit above 2,000 megawatts and forced authorities to extend blackouts even further, in a context already marked by other damaged generating units and fuel shortages.
“You can’t charge me 500 pesos for a Cristal beer that isn’t cold,” complained a customer at a café on Ayestarán Street. The manager immediately shot back: “Nobody on this street has anything cold. Either you pay that price or you don’t drink it, because I can’t lower it any more.”
The losses for private merchants are severe. The ice cream vendor in Lawton eventually moved on with several tubs still on his tricycle. Left behind was the echo of his successive price cuts and neighbors eager to enjoy a cold dessert but fearful they would not be able to keep it from melting.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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