Have pushcart, will travel: voting with their feet, Venezuela's small business owners look outside for markets.

Alberto Martini got laid off from his job as a Caracas bank manager three years ago. But he never imagined the effects would be felt as far away as Miami, Ecuador, even China.

With banking industry jobs scarce in Venezuela's shrinking economy, Martini and an unemployed colleague did what many thousands of other Venezuelans have done: They swallowed their pride and created their own jobs, pushing around carts offering Venezuela's traditional sweetened rice drink, called chicha. The ex-bankers' carts and secret chicha formula caught on, and the pair founded a company. Today, as Juan Chichero expands abroad, Martini says he is grateful to the banking bosses who downsized him into a new industry. "If I had time, I'd take chicha to the moon," Martini says.

He's not alone. Venezuela's economic implosion, in which the economy has shrunk 20% and the bolivar declined 60% against the U.S. dollar in two years, has pushed a wave of Venezuelan franchisers and other small businesses to seek their fortunes on foreign shores--and more than a few are striking pay dirt. While Martini's Venezuelan sales dropped 40% last year, he now has 30 pushcarts in Ecuador and 53 stands in southern Florida and plans to open more in Costa Rica, Spain and perhaps China.

For Venezuelan businesses, other Latin American nations offer good market prospects. So, increasingly, does southern Florida, thanks in part to the thousands of Venezuelans who have emigrated there to escape turmoil back home. They not only provide readymade customers eager for a familiar taste of Venezuela but potential franchisees as well. Martini says he signs many of his franchise agreements with Venezuelans who have their U.S. visas and want to arrange employment before leaving for Miami.

"The tendency is [to ask]: 'Why not take with me this business I've seen on the corner for years'?" says Alfonso Riera, director of Front Consulting in Caracas, which advises franchise-owners about expansion. He calculates that the nation's crisis has quadrupled the number of franchises seeking prospects abroad. "Venezuelans never before thought of leaving Venezuela to do business," he says.

Of course, franchise expansion is nothing new for Venezuela, which has Latin America's third-largest franchise industry, after Mexico and Brazil, and where the industry has grown 20% annually in recent years, But with more political uncertainty likely as President Hago Chavez and his opponents battle over a recall referendum, many franchisers are now looking abroad instead.

"Bringing dollars here would he crazy," says Luis Gonzalez, part-owner of the clothing-store chain E.P. Kids and who plans to open five stores in the next three years in the Dominican Republic and 100 stores in 10 years in southern Florida. Each of the Florida stores will represent an investment of US$800,000. "It's money which will never enter Venezuela until things here get resolved," Gonzalez says.

Like minds. Costa Rica is a particularly favored destination, thanks to its stability and steadily growing economy. Also, like Venezuela, the Central American nation has a strong U.S. influence, so Costa Ricans are open to the idea of franchise management, says Alfredo Cohen, general director of shopping mall builder Sambil, which is negotiating to build there. "It's a good step toward opening [shopping] centers in the United States," he says.

Not all franchise owners have lost. faith in Venezuela. Obleamania owner Carlos Sandoval is working on expansions of his cookie company in Chile, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Mexico. But he is investing in his two-year old company at home, too. "These are situations which will pass," Sandoval says of Venezuela's economic problems. "If one stops to wait for events to pass, life passes by."