Hector Saldivar remembers when foreigners knock on his mother’s door in Mexico.
They did not try to borrow a cup of sugar, as the old adage says, but rather a cup of spicy sauce.
“My mother, was already quite famous at home with the spicy sauce she made,” said Saldivar. “This spicy family’s recipe sauce.”
Others at her door asked for this recipe or the opportunity to embark on business with her. Very protective of the family recipe, she refused to share it until the right trading partner came to strike: her son.
“My mother was super happy that she was finally going to pass the recipe,” said Saldivar to Ashley Chaparro from “Bísness School” – an NBC podcast which highlights the stories of success for Latin entrepreneurs.
Saldivar has transformed the recipe for spicy sauce into the Tia Lupita Foods brand, a range of Mexican inspiration of healthy foods which also includes fries and tortillas. He took the products from his mother’s door to local stores, then to national retailers and “Shark Tank”.
“It is really difficult to grasp and understand the extent of the maintenance of this business and the commercial expectation of a thousand stores,” said Saldivar. “Little by little, baby steps … then normal steps, then you can start trotting then run.”
Managing a business, however, was new to him.
Hector Saldivar is in the bottle of his mother’s famous spicy sauce after launching her business. (Hector Saldivar)
In Mexico, he worked for a manufacturer of car batteries, whose upper ingredient is sulfuric acid. He then studied abroad, receiving care packages from his mother which would include his spicy sauce, which he would share with friends from the university.
He then joined what at the time was a brand of emerging food founded in Mexico City called Klass Time. There, he sold frescas, a mixture of powdered drinks which he compared to Kool-Aid but with Mexican flavors.
“It was my initiation to food and drinks,” he said. “It was an entry -level role. I was in sales. I was literally a door to door seller.”
Saldivar was now the one who struck the doors of foreigners.
He advanced to large companies, joining Nestlé then Diamond Foods, who in 2015 was acquired by Snyder’s-lance. To stay with the company, he should move from the Bay region to North Carolina.
“It was this fork on the road,” he said.
His options, he said, had to move to the East Coast and stay with a large business or stay in the Bay region and seek a new job. Or…
“Start this business,” he said. “This thing that people had been a bit like pinching, pinching me, pinching me:” You should start your own brand of spicy sauce. “… I chose the road less of a vocal.”
This route included the launch of a self -funded operation in 2019 which finally put its spicy sauce in local stores. He was quickly discovered by a distributor, his products in progress to reach the shelves of Walmart, Whole Foods, Wegman’s and other retailers.
The demand exceeded the operation, which means that it was time to share the recipe of his mother with a manufacturer to develop the business.
“By making myself going to a manufacturer, then you have to give this recipe that you really like to be delegate and trusts,” he said. “You must be very careful.”
Saldivar appeared in the successful reality series ABC “Shark Tank” in the hope of concluding an agreement with one of its investors. At the start of his sale argument, a shark did not seem so interested in taking a bite.
“The first thing I said is:” Lift my hand if you like to eat tacos “, said Saldivar about his argument in the show. “What happens? Daymond John says:” I hate tacos “.…. You could hear the disc scratching in my head. Errrrrr. Like what? What Taco truck run on your puppy that made you hate tacos?
Kevin O’Leary – The shark nicknamed “M. Wonderful ”- loved tacos and the company. Saldivar concluded an agreement with O’Leary for $ 500,000 and acquired a national exhibition of the millions of people who saw the episode.
“I remember, I watched online sales occur live while the episode broadcast on my shopify and it was something incredible, as if we had 50,000 visitors,” he said.
Word of mouth, said Saldivar, is the most effective way to develop a business. Whether by striking at the door of a stranger, appearing in a television program or buying his own product from the grocery store and giving it to the customer online behind him – everything he did.
“All this is part of the bustle,” he said. “All this is part of trying to get your brand and your products in people’s hands.”
