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As a teenager in South Texas, Veronica Garza thought she would never enjoy a family dinner again.
Diagnosed with lupus, her grain-free diet took off the table much of the foods she’d eaten with her Mexican-American family.
“I felt like I really missed a very important part of my legacy in not being able to,” [eat] Meals I loved, “recalls Garza, now 40.
She especially missed her grandmother’s tortillas, so she started making her own with almond flour instead of corn or wheat flour – heretical to some and certainly a departure from her grandmother’s recipe. But after spending many weekends testing the recipe with her mother in the kitchen, Garza finally felt confident enough to put her tortillas on her family’s dining table.
Her family not only agreed: Miguel, her brother, tried for years to convince her to sell her. In 2014, the two siblings and their mother founded Siete Family Foods, which now makes a range of grain-free Mexican-American foods, from tortillas and chips to taco spices and dairy-free queso dips.
The Austin, Texas-based company expects annual retail sales of $ 200 million this year. Its products are sold in more than 16,000 stores across the US and Canada, including retail giants like Walmart, Target and Whole Foods.
The whole family works for Siete: seven of them, hence the name. Veronica is the company’s President and Chief Innovation Officer. Her mother Aida takes care of the shopping. Her father, Bobby, a longtime attorney, works in Siete’s legal department.
All four of her siblings too – including Miguel, 34, who is the CEO of Siete. His “numerical goal,” he says, is to grow Siete to $ 1 billion in annual sales by expanding into restaurants and convenience stores.
All seven members of the Garza family work for Siete today.
Source: Siete Family Foods
His “overriding goal”, however, is for the company with almost 100 employees to always feel like a family business. As he puts it, the core values of the company are “family first, family second, company third”. And he wants to help other Latinx entrepreneurs with this.
It’s easier said than done.
‘We have to be crazy’ to start a tortilla business
In early 2014, Veronica and Miguel Garza entered Wheatsville, a food cooperative based in Austin. They handed the shop owner a plastic bag of freshly baked tortillas and insisted that he try one while they were still warm.
“As soon as he tried it, you could see in his eyes that he loved it,” says Veronica. “He immediately said, ‘Okay, we’ll take these.'”
Wheatsville went further: the store’s staff advised the Garzas on starting a food production facility, from registering the business to creating a brand and logo, to renting a small commercial kitchen nearby.
The Garzas initially named their business “Must B Nutty” after the almond flour in their tortillas. And given the siblings’ professional degrees – an MBA for Veronica and a law degree for Miguel – they must “be crazy to start making tortillas and turn them into a business,” says Veronica.
The industrial kitchen they shared with a chocolate maker helped the Garzas cook and press up to 30 tortillas at a time – and filled up to five industrial refrigerators a week before they were shipped to Wheatsville.
“Around May 1st, 2014, we launched our first product boxes [on] the shelf “in Wheatsville,” says Miguel. “On May 2nd, all products were sold out.”
Veronica Garza and her mother Aida made tortillas in the Austin industrial kitchen in Siete’s early days.
Source: Siete Family Foods
Wheatsville’s food and wellness director Niki Nash recalls the Garza’s tortillas flying off the shelves – valued at about $ 40,000 in just eight months – and realizing that something was on Siete.
“Here in Texas, tortillas are everything,” says Nash. “We would literally see people come into our stores with tiny tears in their eyes, like, ‘I can finally eat tacos again!'”
However, other grocery stores were harder to convince. Miguel’s biggest destination was Whole Foods, based in Austin. But convincing the national grocery chain wasn’t as easy as walking into a store with a bag of warm tortillas.
“Whole Foods actually told us ‘no’ a couple of times,” he says.
The tide finally turned, says Miguel, when a customer mentioned Sietes Tortillas on the side to Whole Foods co-founder and CEO John Mackey.
A Whole Foods spokesperson confirms that word of mouth worked: In early 2015, Siete launched in Whole Foods’ flagship store in Austin.
Help other Latinx entrepreneurs along the way
Maybe Siete’s timing was a godsend.
In 2019, the Tortilla Industry Association, a nonprofit trading group, estimated the country’s annual tortilla sales at $ 16 billion, a sign of the steady growth of the Hispanic food market over the past decade. Analysts also predict that the gluten-free and grain-free market will nearly double to $ 7.5 billion by 2027.
The company has already translated that momentum into fundraising, raising $ 90 million in 2019 from private equity firm Stripes Group, Kenworthy, a Stripes Group partner who sits on Siete’s board of directors.
But Siete isn’t the only game in town. Competitors like Unbun Foods, Tia Lupita, and Thrive Market also sell grain-free tortillas. Industry giants like General Mills and Frito-Lay are promoting their gluten-free products, and grain-free isn’t exactly a big stretch.
“Don’t give them ideas,” jokes Miguel, before adopting a more serious tone: “I have great faith in our ability to compete in the market.”
This also includes setting yourself apart from the competition. Miguel’s strategy: Emphasize the Mexican-American heritage in Siete’s branding. It promises authenticity to customers, he says, and helps the Garzas capitalize on Siete’s success to open the door to more Hispanic and Latin American entrepreneurs.
For years, the family hoped their company could inspire other start-up founders and overcome the barriers Hispanic and Latinx founders face when seeking investment. Last year, a Crunchbase report found that only 2.4% of all VC funding since 2015 went to companies with Black and Latinx founders.
In April, Siete took a more direct step and announced an annual award of $ 25,000 for other Latinx-owned food companies. It’s called Juntos Fund – “together” in Spanish.
After more than 100 applications, Siete presented CocoAndre, a Dallas-based chocolatier and horchata maker, with its first prize last month. Something about the company seemed familiar to me: CocoAndre is run by a Mexican-American mother-daughter team.
In other words, says Veronica, the fund is already giving Siete the opportunity to live his mission – family first.
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