Cayman Cigar Company Champions Charity

Dinner, with a twist, was served up at the Abacus restaurant in Camana Bay on Wednesday, 9th February, as the Cayman Cigar Company hosted a special event to showcase cigars made exclusively from Caymnanian grown Tobacco.

Cigar aficionados, epicureans and socialites all enjoyed dinner, along with choice beverages in the run-up to the presentation of the cigars, which featured 50 hand-rolled prototypes made just for Wednesday night’s guests.

Cayman Cigar Company’s Sales and Service Manager, Thomas Gaw referred to the presentation of the special cigars as the next era in the company’s evolution, adding the the company hoped to have more events in the future, as it seeks to grow advocacy for its mission.

Along with being the only cigar company to now feature Caymanian grown tobacco, the Cayman Cigar Company has a bigger goal in mind and is also the only cigar company in the world to donate 100 percent of its profits to charity.

The company’s story is quite unique in many respects. It is the brainchild of Granger Haugh and his son Scott, who saw the need to assist the Bridge Foundation in the Cayman Islands, which is a programme dedicated to helping recovering addicts to restore their lives.

They came up with an effective way to make sure that the Bridge Foundation would feature a robust and thorough transitional phase and through the family’s Haugh Foundation, developed Beacon Farms on 32 Acres of land in North Side, where persons in recovery could continue to progress in their sobriety whilst having gainful employment.

“The farm provides Caymanians with agricultural jobs that never existed before. We produce coconut oil. Coconut flower, sugar beets that are used to make mengel - which is a type of animal feed - coconut trees and other crops. It’s really an agricultural incubator and our brand new compost facility allows us to produce some of the best soil on the Island,” noted Cayman Cigar Company Director Scott Haugh.

He explained that the Cigar Company is a vehicle to capitalize on the work of the farm in order to benefit the charitable arm of the operation and all of the profits go toward charity.

“We have been involved with the Bridge Foundation, which is doing a great job supporting recovering addicts and providing safe, supervised residential homes; essentially a transitional house for early recoverers to re-establish their lives since 2009,” noted Mr. Haugh, who added that his family had been coming to Cayman since 1978 and wanted to find a way to give back to the place they fell in love with all those years ago.

The Cayman Cigar Company’s main retail point is in Bodden Town, which is also where the cigars are hand-rolled and stored.

Their cigars are available at various locations around Grand Cayman including Tortuga, Blackbeards and the Ritz Carlton, with other retail points to be added.

The range of cigars offered by the Cayman Cigar Company includes the Sovereign, the Diplomat, the Monarch and the Caravel, which feature a mixture of tobacco from around the Caribbean region.

The launch date for retail of their cigars featuring Caymanian grown tobacco and presented at Wednesday’s event is to be announced.