How I Built This with Guy Raz - Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Miguel and Veronica Garza grew up in Laredo, Texas, in the kind of family that did almost everything together. So when Veronica realized that a grain-free diet was helping her cope with debilitating health issues, the rest of the family—all six of them—adopted the same paleo-friendly diet. Soon Veronica was making her own almond flour tortillas at home and selling them at a CrossFit gym that the Garza family had launched in Laredo. The grain-free tortillas were a hit, and by 2016, Siete Family Foods products were being sold in Whole Foods Markets across the country. Today, Veronica and Miguel head the company with the help of the whole family, and Siete has become one of the fastest-growing Mexican-American food brands in the U.S.How I Built This Summit - information and tickets at:http://summit.npr.orgSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Airbnb.ca slash host. The conversation usually centered on me saying that I thought the tortillas could be successful and her not being able to make the leap because of health insurance. Yeah, that's exactly how it went. And it was really my brother telling me that if you don't take this risk, you're going to be really upset with yourself if somebody else does it. And I think this is what got her over the edge. I told her that she was going to be more upset, like having to buy an almond tortilla from somebody else, knowing that it could have been her.

From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how the Garza family opened a CrossFit gym in Laredo, Texas, pivoted into selling paleo-friendly tortillas and built Siette foods into one of the fastest growing Mexican-American food brands in the country. The first business idea you will ever have is unlikely to be the one that works. I mean, how many times have you heard entrepreneurs on this show talk about ideas they considered before they landed on the one that actually took off?

And how many businesses start out as one thing and then turn into something slightly related but bigger and smarter? Starbucks began as a shop that only sold coffee beans. The e-commerce platform Shopify grew out of an online store that sold snowboards. Stacey's Pita Chips was originally an outdoor sandwich cart. In today's story, the Mexican-American food brand Siette Foods can trace its origin. origin to an earlier and totally unrelated business idea, a CrossFit gym in Laredo, Texas. The Garza family, all seven of them, pitched in to launch the gym. And as they got more into CrossFit, they also got more into the paleo diet that many crossfitters swear by. No grains, no

legumes, no dairy, no refined sugar. Now, it also happened that one of the Garza siblings, Veronica, had developed an autoimmune condition, and when she ate grains, her symptoms got worse. So together, the Garza family decided to basically go paleo. In fact, their family motto is, Junotos is mejor. Together is better. Now, this is no small feat

for a fourth-generation Mexican-American family that loves food, especially Mexican food, because the building blocks of Mexican food include corn, wheat, beans, and rice. And if you're paleo, you can't eat any of it. But instead of turning taco night into lettuce wrap night, Veronica Garza started experimenting with grain-free flowers, with the hope of making authentic Mexican-style tortillas.

And eventually, she started selling her tortillas at the family CrossFit gym. Florida, Texas, after all, is a border town, And it turns out, paleo-eating crossfitters really missed Mexican food. But how that cross-fit gym became Siette Foods? Now the largest paleo-friendly Mexican food brand in the U.S.? That is our story today. Miguel Garza and his sister Veronica, who originally founded the company, grew up in a family of five kids, all of whom worked together at Siette Foods today.

Miguel is the youngest. His family, by the way, calls him Mike, and Veronica, who's known in the family as Vetto, is in the middle. They grew up surrounded by a hybrid of Tex-Mex culture in Laredo. I think it very much felt like one big community. A lot of people had family, you know, living on one side, but spending a lot of time together because it's so easy to just cross back and forth.

And we were probably in the might. minority in not speaking fluent Spanish. I know I always felt a little embarrassed that I didn't, you know, I wasn't as fluent as I should be because most everybody that I was friends with did speak Spanish, even if they were, you know, third or fourth generation Americans. But we definitely do have Thios and Thias and My Thio and My Tia, they are not my aunt and uncle. Like I just wouldn't, I wouldn't know him as that. Right.

But I think what was very fun about our house was it wasn't just all of the siblings, but all of the siblings had friends or we had cousins. And so I'm the youngest. My oldest sister is, I think, about 12 years older than me. Hopefully I don't know, maybe less. Yeah, I'm going to 10. Nine or 10, yeah. Because if I get that wrong and she hears it, I'm going to hear about it after.

She's not that old. Yeah, so, but everybody invited friends. And there was always this, like, there were just always people in and out of the house. Did you growing up, did you grow up with a strong sense of identity? Did you, was Mexican culture and Mexican heritage really an important part of, you know, family traditions and gatherings and get-togethers, just the contours of your lives? I think it was an important part, you know, but I didn't really. realize it at the time. Part of that was because I grew up in a town that was, you know, 98% like me. I didn't really realize that it was Mexican culture. It was just our culture.

And it actually took me leaving Laredo to realize how much my life had been influenced by Mexican culture. I was no longer around so many people that looked at. like me and were part of that same culture. Yeah. Tell me about food when you were growing up. What was, what kind of food did you guys eat? So we always had a ton of food in our house. I remember my mom cooking, like, very simple food.

But it was a combination of Mexican food, lots of tacos and tortillas. But, you know, we would also have a lot of like spaghetti nights and pizza nights. Yep. I remember a lot of Bikadio, which again, simple, just like ground beef, chopped onion, some potato. I think I went through a phase where I was the biggest brat and I just wanted McDonald's every night. I do remember that. And the family doesn't let me live it down. They're like, oh my gosh, you used to beg and cry for McDonald's every night.

You were so annoying. Yeah, he's not joking, but actually cry. But we ate a lot at home. So my mom, she was cooking for seven people every day. It was seven o'clock and we're eating dinner and my mom made something and we were sitting around the table. And Veronica, I guess from what I've read, you started to have some struggles around the time you were in high school with your health. Is that right? So I would say I was very healthy.

throughout my childhood. And when I was 17 years old, a senior in high school, that's when I first got sick. What happened? So I was in cheerleading and I was very active. And I started noticing that I just had bruises all over my body. And I kind of just told myself, oh, you know, must have gotten hit doing a stunt or tumbling. But it just kept happening. Wow.

And the bruises were just black and huge. So I finally went and got it checked. And it turned out that my platelet counts were just extremely low. And they couldn't figure out why. So the diagnosis was an autoimmune condition called ITP. And it just happened. It just came. I mean, your entire life, you'd never experience anything like this. And then at 17, bam, all of a sudden these symptoms start to show up. Yeah, so it really changed my lifestyle. So at the time, you know, doctors were kind of like, well, you know, you probably shouldn't be doing the type of exercise you were doing before. Like, no tumbling, know this, no that. And, you know, I was put on medication, a lot of steroids and start gaining a lot of weight. And it was tough. And then eventually they diagnosed lupus and something called Hashimoto's. And essentially these are auto-imod. immune conditions. Yeah. And over the years, there have been additional diagnosis. So I think lupus was in 2004, maybe. And from what I understand, lupus is basically it's like when your immune system becomes overreactive, and then it kind of attacks the tissue in your body, right? Right. And they don't know what causes it. So it's very hard to treat because you don't know what the underlying cause is. So you're kind of dealing with these

these health challenges, but you still went off to college, and you graduated from the University of Texas in Austin, and I think in 2003. And what did you do after college? So from 2003 to 2007, maybe, I was lost. I had gotten my degree. And when I was living in Austin, I had gotten really into music. And I started looking into how I might have a career on the business side of the music industry. And I found this program in Austin. The focus was, you know, in all of the different entertainment industries like music, film, and television. So I just wanted to work in the music industry and thought, well, let me get this MBA because then maybe somebody will hire me.

But I never got a job in the music industry. Instead, there was an adjunct role for an instructor at the university in my hometown. So I started as an adjunct faculty and ended up doing that for six years. And what were you teaching? So the course was called University Seminar, and the easiest way for me to explain it is that it's like an intro to college class for freshman students. So they're really learning all about time management and study skills. And I felt terrible because I am probably the worst person to learn any of those things from. All right.

So you're doing that. You're back in Laredo. Tell me about, because this is an important part of the story, because there is another brother. And what's his name, by the way? Roberto, but we usually call him Rob. And am I right that Rob is like, was like a cross. Maybe still is, but at the time was getting into CrossFit? Yeah, so I think in about 2008 he discovered CrossFit.

And I think through that, he had learned about, you know, this different way of eating. Because a lot of Crossfitters are, eat like a paleo diet. Like no grains, no legumes, no dairy, no sugar, no refined oils. Like, I did it for a while. I think people listening to this show have heard me say this. I'm sorry. Yeah. But I've done it before.

And did he kind of adopt that diet? You know, I don't think he fully had at that time. I think initially when he had read about it, he had seen people talking about how it had helped them deal with different autoimmune issues. So he suggested that I try it. And probably around the same time, my brother, Mike and Becky had also gotten into cross-examined. at the time. And they had also started sort of dabbling in eating this way. It was almost like we all just sort of decided we should just all like go all in and do this together. So yeah, I think it was kind of a group decision. Right. What like where were you guys getting like

almond flour and I don't know, cassava, whatever you were using to, or were you just not doing that stuff? You were just like eating vegetables and meat. Yeah. No, I've remembered. having to go online and order almond flour. I think I went to like nuts.com or something like that and bought a bunch of almond flour. And I do remember even my parents got in on this and my dad would just eat whatever my mom would put in front of him as long as it tasted good. But my mom really got into the kitchen and started, you know, working on different recipes just, you know, so that we could continue to sit together around the dinner table and have a meal as a family. So my mom got very creative in the kitchen and she and I were often in there, also with my

sister. And we would try to recreate a lot of the meals that, you know, we would normally have. So whether that was like, Mike, do you remember eating like misazas? We would do that often. Yeah, there was, I remember my mom and Vetto and my sister Becky. making all sorts of paleo recreations or grain-free recreations of different foods that we missed. Yeah, so we would try to make bread and pizza and whatever we could so that we could follow a grain-free diet but still enjoy a lot of the foods that we loved. So here's kind of a curious part of the story, which is around this time, right, you decide to adopt this diet.

the whole family decides to adopt this diet to see, right, if this would help your condition. And by the way, did it, I mean, did you start to see effects pretty quickly on how you felt? Yes, so I actually have a memory of being in the backyard, working out with my family. We were doing squats. And I distinctly remember not feeling pain in my knees. And they used to be like very squeaky. Like I could actually hear this. squeak in my knees and it wasn't there anymore and that was probably like several months maybe

three or four months into eating paleo wow and I looked over at my mom and I was like my knees don't hurt this is crazy so I knew it was helping I'm still I'm still hung up with the idea that the whole family was doing squats together you guys must be you guys are like a like an Instagram family like the whole family like all seven of you like doing CrossFit in the backyard and like doing this together. Like, that's pretty cool. Well, let me paint a picture for you, though, of kind of how that started. My mom and I would watch my brother and his friends and my sister do CrossFit in the backyard, and they invited us to join them. And I was terrified of working out in front of people. To me, that was scary. I don't want anybody to see me exercising. What if I do it wrong?

So she and I started doing sort of our version of CrossFit workouts inside the house while everybody else was doing CrossFit in the backyard. And I remember Mike coming inside the house and trying to help my mom do a squat without falling. And that probably happened a couple of times. And very quickly my mom got really good at CrossFit. and then we got comfortable enough to join them in the backyard. But now my mom is a beast and she can do more pull-ups than me. So it's kind of embarrassing.

So all right. So you guys are doing CrossFit in the backyard. You're eating basically a paleo diet. And I guess, Miguel, around this time, you had plans to go to law school. Yep. And then in the middle of all of this, you guys actually opened up a cross-year. CrossFit gym in Laredo. How did that happen? There really wasn't an intent at first, but we were all working out together a lot. And so we had like a couple of my friends, two or three of my sisters,

my mom, we had a couple of neighbors and then our neighbor's friend. So there were 20 people in the backyard. And I actually had a fight. You know, my dad was an attorney. And we had this argument where I told him, hey, I'm like, I don't want to go to law school. I really like this, like, gym, business type stuff. I'm going to do that instead. And he looked at me and he was like, no, you're not. You wanted to open up the CrossFit gym? Yeah, I wanted to stay in town. There was all this momentum and everybody, like the whole family's together. Everybody's having fun. And the gym was born at that point. But because you did actually wind up. going after law school in Austin.

And so who was the driving force behind opening the gym? So my sister and I were the two that were in town, that were sort of managing the opening of the gym. And I'm assuming it's not like rent is not that crazy high in Laredo, right? You can probably get a reasonable deal for a space. Yeah, I think so. I don't think it was like ridiculous, but I do remember feeling a little bit of, anxiety because both of my sisters were texting me saying,

hey, we found a space and we're about to actually make this a gym. And they just did it. G7 athletics was born. Yeah, I sometimes do just do things without thinking about it. And, and I mean, but so you found a space to open up a gym. And, I mean, I don't know that much about CrossFit, but I'm imagining you have to become a certified, trainer to train. So who was the trainer? Were you guys the trainers? Yeah, it started with my sister and I,

and I think we even hired some of my brother's friends who had been doing CrossFit with him in the backyard. So four of us who would coach classes in the evenings after we all got out of our full-time jobs and then on the weekends as well. I mean, the gym just started growing at that point. Everybody was actually like mom and dad were there every evening. And then, And then I think my older brother, he maybe saw that there was some fun happening. And he eventually moved from Sugarland to Laredo because we needed somebody to manage the gym full-time. So yeah, we jumped through the hoops, became a business, had a gym, and we're coaching people in the evenings. And you were living in Austin and going to law school and what, kind of helping them manage it from Austin?

Ish, I was doing the programming, but I was also coaching classes here in Austin at a gym called CrossFit Austin. I'm looking at a family photo of the 70 of you guys. Your dad, how old is your dad, by the way? What is he currently 66, going to turn 67? Your dad is like Lou Ferrigno, man. He is ripped. All right, so you've got this CrossFit gym going, and how was that as a business? Was that, were you guys making money?

It's freaking hard. Right. It was the topic of conversation at our dinner table for about five straight years. Okay, it's a business. How do we grow it? What do we do? Are we missing anything? Maybe we need to go get another certification.

Maybe we have to offer another class. Because it was really, like, the model is service-based, right? It's like personal training, but in a group setting. and that kind of business is hard. Service-based businesses are hard. So I remember just feeling constantly defeated, but also very excited about the community that we were building at the gym.

Yeah, because it is a community. I mean, CrossFit is, I mean, some people call it a cult, but it is, I mean, the good way, right? But it is a community. And I wonder, was the investment significant? Did you guys have to put in a lot of money? I mean, yes, you signed a lease. and you had to have a space, and presumably you had to buy some equipment, right?

So did you have to put in considerable money into this venture? Yes, luckily my parents were giving enough, and they had a little bit of savings for the gym, and so they bought the equipment, and for them, it was like, okay, now we have a gym that we come to. And then after that, after the equipment expense, it was, I think that's when we really learned a business has to make money in order to be sustainable.

What was the, what was the, I mean, what was so hard about the money side? I mean, you're charging people, what, $20 a class or $30 a class, or a monthly fee or something like that? Yeah, at that point in time, it's like a monthly fee. It's probably anywhere from $75 to $115 a month if my memory serves me right. And you can only have so many people in this space. Right. So at some point, you out.

grow the space. And then you have overhead and then you're paying coaches. And then at some point, you're trying to pay yourself. And I'm speaking again, mostly from afar because my brother started to manage it full time. But it is a tough business. That's my own, my own experience. I honestly don't think we ever really saw it as a money making business. It was more just my parents made this investment because it allowed us, even though we were all living in separate houses, working different jobs. We could all get together every evening and exercise as a family and then with our extended gym family. I think we were always talking about potentially closing the gym because it wasn't bringing in money, but it was okay. It was kind of the

decision we always came to as long as, you know, Rob could support himself. you know, pay himself a salary as the general manager, you know, as long as we weren't losing money. We felt like it was okay. And I think that's an important distinction. Everybody was working on it, but like Vettel still had a full-time job at the university. And my sister Becky still had a full-time job at the university, as did my mom, my other sister, and my dad. So this was really about like the gym became this. after work, place to exercise, hang out, and be with family.

Meantime, Veronica, I guess around, you're in Laredo, you're experimenting with different recipes. And I guess, I mean, given that you guys have Mexican heritage and you did eat Mexican food growing up, I mean, there is a challenge with Mexican food because it's not grain-free friendly. You're like, it's like corn and flour and it's not, you know, and rice and it's not paleo for them. There's beans. I mean, it's, I'm assuming that, you know, this would have posed a problem when, you know, when you guys wanted to have like a Mexican dinner. Yeah, there were a lot of times. So my family and I love to, you know, we would get together after we did our workout and just have a meal together.

And then on the weekends, we would love to get together in the backyard and, you know, somebody would grill. And, you know, we'd enjoy these carnage asada with tortillas. And we couldn't really do that anymore. Yeah. And then we would just take like a piece of lettuce and put it in there and call it a taco. I've done that. It's not the same. Let's be honest.

Let us rest. They're not the same. That was okay when I did it with my family. Not fun, but at least everybody else was eating, you know, a lettuce-wrapped taco. But then I would go to like carnasadas with my friends. And it was really awkward showing up with like a bag of lettuce so that you could have your taco while everybody else. Yeah, it was embarrassing. Oh, you'd show up with like a bag of lettuce.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, yeah. There was definitely the sense like, especially being in Laredo, like we were missing out on part of the culture there. Every household has tortillas, every meal has tortillas. Sometimes even if you're not eating like Mexican food, you still have your tortillas on the table as your bread. So it was really tough. Did you guys grow up with tortillas at home often?

I mean, because or just every day. Oh, you always end flour or corn tortillas or both? So growing up in Laredo, at least in our household, it was more flour. I grew up mostly eating flour tortillas because that's what our grandmother would make us. So when I would go to Baytown and visit her, we would always show up to a fresh pile of tortillas and a pot of beans that she had freshly made and got a chance to make them with her sometimes. I think probably every single one of her grandkids had an opportunity to do that. So she would make the, they're called testales, the dough balls. And then, you know, we would help her roll them out with some flour on the table.

And these things are like pillows of deliciousness. Yes. She'd cook them on a cast iron pan. Yeah. And all you need is like you don't need to add anything to them, but you may add a little bit of butter or you add some beans or you add. I mean, they're just like. Yeah, they were often a snack. At grandma's house, you would just walk into the kitchen, get some butter.

and roll up a tortilla and walk around with it as a snack. So, yeah, they were a big part of our life. And it was kind of sad being without them. Yeah. So it sounds like you started to think about ways you could make a version of them that you could eat. Yeah, so I had already started experimenting with almond flour to make breads and pizza crust. And I don't know, I had just had this idea that maybe it could somehow work in a tortilla. and just started experimenting with it.

I didn't really tell anybody that I was, you know, working on this. But as soon as I had something that resembled a tortilla and tasted decent, I sort of put it on the table and just one day at dinner let people grab from the pile. Didn't really say much. I was like, I made those, but I'm not going to tell you what's in them. And watched their reactions. And when everybody wanted to know more and continued eating them after their first, spite, I realized that, okay, that's a good start. But at the time, they were probably a little more like a

toasted. They weren't. Yeah, they're crispy. Yeah. They weren't, they weren't like chewy. They had that like chewiness because it was basically what, like almond flour and water and salt. My initial recipe was, yeah, very close to that. But I did a lot of internet searches of just like grain-free flowers and ingredients that were fairly easy to find, not in a group. grocery store, but I could go online and order some almond flour, tapioca flour, and, you know, see what worked. And thought, maybe there's something here that I could call a tortilla and continue to eat my fajitas, maybe even share them with some friends, you know, show up to a carne asada with them

and not feel embarrassed about. Like, if somebody else tried them, I wouldn't be, you know, nervous about it. Were you always a baker? Like, were you always into baking? I'm actually a horrible baker. Horrible. I accidentally made a lot of good things, but I am really bad at measuring and weighing things. And my mom had to stand over me and watch me make them so she could write down exactly the measurement so that I could do it over and over again. Otherwise, it would have been a different product every single time. Yeah, I was just going to say that there's like creative genius where people are like, I don't know how it works, but like I do it and it works. Yeah. And if you were to see my sister in the kitchen the entire time she would be telling you,

don't watch me. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm measuring. And then at the end, you're like, holy crap, this tastes good. What do you mean? You don't know what you're doing. When I don't know what I'm doing, it doesn't taste. like this. At what point did you like in your experimenting with tortillas, did you come up with

something where you're like, this is actually pretty close to the thing that my grandma used to make? Ooh, I am a little bit of a perfectionist. So I think even to this day, I'm still trying to get it to be like my grandma's tortilla. But it was very telling. There was a point probably maybe a year and a half after I started making this tortillas, maybe two years. My mom didn't tell me this, but she took up a sample to my grandmother in Baytown and let my grandma try the tortillas and recorded her trying them and then commenting on what she thought. And there's still a video that my mom has of my grandma saying, Beiro? These tortillas are good. These tortillas are good. They're better than mine. They're better than mine. They're delicious. Wow. I like them. And then very

grandma, at least is very much my grandma. She said, they're too expensive for my belly, but they're very good. When we come back in just a moment, how Veronica's tortilla recipe eventually moved out of their mom's kitchen and onto grocery store shelves in Austin. And also, some advice from Miguel on what not to do if you're looking to sell your tortillas at Whole Foods. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2012, and after a bunch of trial and error experiments with different ingredients, Veronica's feeling confident enough about her recipe for grain-free tortillas that she's starting to sell

them to a few friends. I was making them and people in Laredo who were, you know, members of our CrossFit gym and friends, they were asking me to make them for them. Yeah. So I had sort of started selling them as a side hustle. Like a dozen of them in a package or something? Exactly, yeah. And we'd love to, you know, gather with our extended gym family and have these

garnisadas together. And I actually never told anybody what the ingredients were. And people trusted me buying these tortillas and eating them, even though they, all they knew was that there's almond flour in them. But they knew no other ingredients because I was so scared that somebody was going to copy me. But yeah, they started asking for them. And then it became this thing where every weekend my mom and I, we'd get together and make just this huge batch and sell them to people at the gym throughout the week. And how much were you selling it for? I think at that time it was like a dollar a tortilla, so it was $12 for a dozen.

Was there any part of you that was thinking this could be really big? Or were you really focused on just kind of making it for people who were asking for it? I don't know if I was thinking it could be really big. But I think I thought it was a possibility that maybe I could start making these tortillas and perhaps get them into like some local stores. Also, I didn't love the job that I had at the time, and I really wanted a way out of it. And if I could sell enough tortillas just to allow me to do that, like make up for the salary that I'd be losing teaching, which wasn't much, by the way, so it wouldn't have been that hard. That was enough for me. But I wasn't thinking it would be what it is today.

That was just not even imaginable to me. Yeah, I'm curious. We're, I mean, given that, you know, Mexican culture is such a huge part of Laredo culture, were people like tortillas that are not made of flour or corn? Like, what? Like, what is this? Like, this is weird. Were you getting any of that? Yeah, I got a lot of that comment.

Right. And I was very nervous anytime, you know, somebody tried them. Because I knew that they, they understood what the real thing was supposed to taste like. Yeah. But I think they usually set that skepticism aside after they would try it. And it just tasted so good because, I mean, almonds are just so sort of buttery because they have, you know, a lot of oil in them. And for a lot of these people, they weren't even following a paleo diet like we were. They were still eating flour and corn and all of the things.

And they still wanted to buy the product. So it was really interesting to see that. And then they would tell me how they would keep them in their bridge and try to hide them from their husband or their kids because these were like their tortillas. They didn't want to share. It was pretty funny to see that happening, like just people getting so excited about it. And were you and your mom just making them at home for people who were buying them in Laredo? Yes. So we didn't have a business.

We probably weren't supposed to be doing this. No, no, no judgment. I'm just trying to figure how you, how did you. How did you cook so many tortillas? Because I understand you roll them out yourself, but like you'd have a lot of cast iron pans in your kitchen at home to make this work. Even if you were only selling it to like 20 or 30 people. Yeah, we were able to purchase some griddles that you sort of place over two burners at a time. Oh, right.

And I think my mom had a kitchen with four burners. So we had the whole stove top set up sort of like a flat top where we could flip tortillas. maybe put, I don't know, six to eight at a time. So I think we would maybe do like 50 packs of tortillas in a weekend. Wow, but that's still like super time-consuming. I'm like thinking one side, it's like a minute, a minute a half, then flip it over. I mean, you might be on a hot spot on the griddle, and you've got to move it to another spot, and then you get some burned spots,

and that one's not good. Like, that's a lot of work. Yeah. And we would recruit whoever was willing to help that weekend, So it was at my mom's house. So sometimes, you know, my dad would have to help with, like, packaging and my younger sister would help make the tortillas when she could. So it was, that was a family affair in itself. Meantime, I'm trying to figure this out because I imagine this is how it went.

Miguel is in law school. He's like thinking about, all right, what am I going to do? He's got all these ideas in his head. And you start scheming in your head thinking, wait a minute. Maybe Veronica's on to something. maybe this is a business. Is that, was it that linear or did it, did you kind of stumble on, on that thought over time? Almost.

I think my sister would tell you I snuck into the business at some point in time. I think I pulled the baby of the family card. But no, I had a, I had graduated from law school in 2012. Yep. I'm here in Austin. And then I saw, like, if you walk into cafes in this city or you walk into Whole Foods and you're just seeing these people that are building businesses from behind a MacBook. And that fascinated me.

So I actually started to sell my sister's tortillas to the gym that I was a coach at. It was around that time where I started having conversations with Vero, and the conversation usually centered on her saying that she, She wanted to do something new, me saying that I thought the tortillas could be successful, getting stuck at this point of her not being able to make the leap because, I mean, really because of health insurance. I think that was like a big thing. Well, yeah, I mean, because you had, presumably you had health insurance through the university where you were teaching, right? Right. And they would just have to approve my health insurance, it being like a group plan.

They were not looking at the fact that I had all of these preexisting conditions. And every time I thought about leaving, my parents would be like, ah, but your health insurance, this is really important. So I think health played a big part in me never doing it. And then also a lot of fear because initially it would have been something that maybe I would have done alone. Yeah. So I kept staying. And Miguel, you were what? You were saying to your sister, hey, maybe we should start a business around this?

Is that, was it that explicit? Yeah, kind of. And I think at the time I actually didn't envision myself being a part of it. I just knew that she really didn't like her job. And what I was realizing was, man, life's too short to not chase what you really want to do or to stay somewhere that you're not happy. And so it wasn't selfishly motivated at that time. Maybe it was later when I asked to join the company because I needed a job. But at that point in time, I was mainly telling her like, look, and I think this is what got her over the edge.

I told her that she would, if she didn't start this business or didn't at least attempt, that she was going to be more upset seeing another person put this product to market and having to buy that product. Like having to buy an almond tortilla from somebody else knowing that it could have been her. And then he said, and I'm going to help you do this. So you're not going to leave your job yet because I know health insurance is important. We're just going to see if this works out. Let's go to a store and see if they want to carry them. And then we'll take it from there.

We'll see what happens. Yeah, it was let's go get a customer. And that's going to be our proof point. If we can go get a customer, a retailer that's going to put our product on the shelf, then that's going to be an indicator that maybe we should pursue this further. So what did you do? Who did you approach? So there's a food co-op here in town called Wheatsville, and I remember it was...

An unfortunate name for a video product. Yes, keep going. So it's one of the only food co-ops in Texas. They have two locations, and it was just after Christmas, so into the new year. And I remember me and Vettel meeting in the parking lot. We walked in. We had a very small appointment with this buyer. And was it relatively easy to get the appointment because Wheatsville is like a relatively small company?

It wasn't a very difficult. And they're good about working with supporting local vendors. And so this guy named Chris Moore, I think is his name. He comes to the front of the store and we hand him a tortilla. And I knew that we had to get him to try it right on the spot. And so he grabbed the bag and he was about to head to his office again. And I remember stopping him and saying, come on, man, like, you got to try this in front of us because I want to know what your actual feedback is. Like, I think it's really good.

I want to know what you think. And so me and my sister are there. He tries the tortilla. And you could tell he went from maybe like skeptic to, oh, my gosh, tell me again what's in this. And my sister explained to him, like, it's paleo, it's vegan, almond flour, and tapioca. And did you, and you presented it to him where they were. warm, the tortillas were warm? Yeah, I think what we had done was we didn't have access to a stove top. So we did probably one of the things that we would never do again, which is microwave the

tortillas. I think my sister was probably like, no, please, like we got to present them in a way. Like, do they have a kitchen or can we put them on a cast iron? And I'm maybe more of the 85% is good enough person. I was like, no, it's fine. Microwave. He's going to try it. They're good. And so he ended up telling us on the spot, he said, I like this. Go to our website. And on our website, there's a list of everything you need to have in order to be a vendor for us. Huh. And I remember we walked out.

We called my mom on speaker. She's like, oh my gosh, how was it? And we told her like, yeah, they accepted the tortillas. Like, now we got to go do everything else. And immediately my mom started crying. And I'm so proud of you guys. I can't believe you did that. That is so awesome.

But that was really just the beginning because from there was, oh, now we have to figure out how to start a business. And we've done the gym thing, but the food business is very different in what's required. Yeah, I mean, you need packaging and a logo and like ingredients in your label. And you probably need to be making your tortillas in like a health department inspected kitchen, which is relatively easy to find a commercial kitchen like that. I mean, right? They exist. I think they exist all over the country.

It is, but we had to find a gluten-free one. Oh, yes, of course, right. With no right. Yeah. So 2014, finding a gluten-free kitchen, I think there were maybe two in Austin, and we found one that was about probably 10 minutes outside of Austin. And you pay, like, a fee to get to use the kitchen for a couple hours a day,

something like that? Yep. And in terms, and then you need packaging and things like that. But these are not huge expenses, but they still cost some money, probably at least $10,000 to get started. Or maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. No, I actually think so, Ziploc bags, not Ziploc, but like twist tie top bags, stickers for the label. Like we went as scrappy as possible.

Yeah, it was probably maybe like under, just to get going. knowing maybe under 2000. Yeah. And what did you call? I mean, you had no name at that time. So he was like, yeah, what's your company called? What was it called? Yeah.

Mike came up with the most brilliant idea. He decided that we should call our tortilla brand must be nutty. And it wasn't like B, like B, like B. Yeah. Just it was just the letter B. Just the letter B. Just let her be nutty. Nuddy.

Yeah. Must be nutty. I thought just with the letter. be easier to trademark. Right. That's right. Because you're thinking like a lawyer, because you're a lawyer.

All right. It's okay. It works. There was a little bit. We weren't excited about it, but the discussion that we had and told ourselves, this could work.

Maybe we could change it later if we need to. But it made a little bit of sense at the time because we all had these graduate degrees. I had an MBA. Mike had his law degree. My dad has law degree, practicing attorney. my mom counseling psychology.

It was primarily the four of us who kind of kicked the business off of the ground. And we were like, yeah, we must be nutty to be doing this. All right. So you got Must Be Nutty. And you got and you find a commercial kitchen. And you start making tortillas. Yeah. And I actually, like, I think along the way, we got really lucky finding this gluten-free kitchen,

Better Bites Bakery, The individual's name was Leah Lopez. And she was kind of like a guardian angel in our first few weeks, months of getting started, because she had a food business. And she had already figured out a lot of this stuff. And so we would ask her questions like, hey, what stores are you in? And so she was letting us initially use her kitchen weekends and then eventually nights and weekends. So describe how this would work.

I mean, it was the two of you, and who else was helping you out? Yeah, so Mike was living in Austin, and my parents and myself were living in Laredo. And we would drive up from Laredo. It's a three-and-a-half-hour drive, and we would do this on a Friday evening after we all got out of our full-time jobs, hop in the car, drive to Austin, meet up at the kitchen. So we probably wouldn't arrive at the kitchen until about 9 p.m. Yeah, wow. and get started with making tortillas for maybe till one in the morning, get back up early the next day to do the same thing. So it was primarily the four of us, but often with help from my now sister-in-law, Alex.

She would help with a lot of the packaging and stuff. And my now husband, David. This is your wife, Miguel, right? Yeah, this is my wife. And David, your husband, who was not your husband at the time. Yeah, and we really, like, what was crazy was we were trying to make. as many as possible because so we had put these tortillas on the shelf in May of 2014 at Weedsville and we put two cases to the shelf and we had learned a little bit from owning the

gym on like marketing a service-based business so what you know what we did was we took a picture we posted it to Instagram and we posted it to Facebook and I came back the next day and we were sold out of two cases. Wow, which is how many tortillas? At that point in time, that would have been 30 packs of 10, so 300. And they were, they were selling like $12 at the shelf at Wheatsville. Again, that was super exciting, but it basically meant that for the next year, my sister and my now brother-in-law and my parents and my wife were going to a kitchen every weekend to make tortillas. Yep, just making tortillas. But you could only make tortillas on the weekend?

Yeah, so what happened was, I think we put tortillas on the shelf in May, and then in October, I decided to leave my teaching job because we had gotten so busy where we needed to produce every night, at least, so that we could keep up with the demand. So I couldn't pay myself anything, but I took out my little retirement with teaching and just decided that I could use that to survive for a few months and then hopefully pay myself a salary. But I packed up a bag and started staying at Mike's house every single day. And I remember not going home for like two months because we got into the kitchen every single day. It just got so busy.

It really started to take off. So the reason we were in there every night is because at this co-op at Wheatsville, we had become the number one selling item in the entire refrigerated case. So, I mean, you guys are making these things. Like, imagine it was hot in there because you have all the burners on. You've got all the cast iron pants going. Like, you've got people patting the, you know, like, then rolling it. And then, like, somebody just cooking them on the cast iron pants. cast iron pans, everybody's sweating.

Was it like that? Yeah. It was hard work. So instead of rolling the tortillas, we found these little tortilla presses where we could, you know, press one tortilla at a time. So it took a lot of arms to get that press down. And I remember always having to go and get my shoulder worked on just because it was always in pain from pressing so many tortillas. And we would often like just go home with our eyebrows, probably like halfway burned off. We were just like burning ourselves.

Getting singed from the heat? Yeah. Exactly, yeah. I don't know if this is true or apocryphal, but I read this story that at a certain point, like you needed help for people to make tortillas for you. And like you were in a grocery store and saw some lady with like a bunch of masa in our shopping cart. And you were like, hey, you want to help us make tortillas? Did that happen?

Yeah, well, so we started with just recruiting, like, friends, but even that wasn't enough and happened to see a woman in the aisle where they sell the tortilla masa, and she actually had like three or four of those in her basket. So I just approached her and asked if she would be interested in a job making tortillas. And so she ended up being one of our first employees. And Miguel, you were what, doing the biz dev stuff, like going out and trying to drum up more stores to sell out, or were you still mainly focused on Wheattsville? No, so we were trying to drum up more business and we were trying to do it in a way that we could manage against. And so obviously the big account that we really wanted was Whole Foods. And I made the mistake of showing up to Whole Foods office and leaving a Ziploc bag of tortillas.

And I thought, oh, this worked for Weetsville. But when I did that at Whole Foods, they thought that we weren't a real business. And so they were like, yeah, we're not going to carry you because you just showed up with a ziplock of tortillas. That clearly didn't work. So how are you, what did you, I mean, did you go back and try again? Yeah, we actually kept on trying, sending emails. And then I was driving around doing deliveries one time. And this individual messaged us and said, hey, big fan.

I buy them at the Wheatsville that y'all started at. Like, I live really close. And I'm actually a director or producer, and we're doing this film, you know, with Whole Foods. And so I saw John Mackey the other day, and I told him he should carry your tortillas. And so here, like, the deal is that I didn't know much about the food industry. And so even the mention of that name, I had to Google. Like I didn't know who that. No, I know.

So I Google and I'm like, oh, my God. It's a founder of Whole Foods. Yeah. So I'm having this moment where like I remember calling my sister and my mom and I'm telling them like, hey, we just got this message. She told me that we should be expecting to hear something soon. From Whole Foods. From Whole Foods.

And I kid you not that we got an email the next day or the day after. And it was a forwarded email from a forwarded email from a forwarded email. And that's all. all because this filmmaker mentioned it to John Mackey, and John Mackey's like, sounds great. He sent an email to somebody, and he's like, hey, check this coming out. And then they forward it and they forward it. And then, like, this person's like, well, if it's coming from John Maggie, I guess, but I'd call him. Yes.

And it came from our local buyer who bought for, like, the five Austin stores. And so I think that is, I don't know, luck is very important. You know, we were working hard. We were making tortillas night and day and on the weekends and trying to build this thing. but we couldn't get in the door of Whole Foods. And then it ended up being a fan of the brand that kickstarted this. When we come back after the break, how Miguel and Veronica renamed the company,

got a chunk of money, and were poised to expand even further when they got the worst news imaginable. Tortillas covered in mold. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. from NPR. Hey, welcome back to how I built this from NPR. So it's around 2015, and after struggling to get their grain-free tortillas into whole foods, Veronica and Miguel are starting to get them

into a few stores. So far, only in Texas, but it's a start. We put the tortillas on the shelf, and this is going to sound redundant, but we, like we had built up this following on Instagram and on Facebook, and I remember taking a picture and then coming back the next day, and the same thing had happened. Like, we had sold through the product that we put on the shelf. Wow. And people were really excited about it. And we were based out of Austin.

So I think there was this added excitement about being local. Oh, it's remarkable also is that you were introducing a product that wasn't only new and different and a little bit, you know, weird unless you were already familiar with grain-free products, but it was expensive. So like a business school professor might look at this and say, well, the barrier to entry is really high because it's expensive and it's different. But actually, in some ways, because these were like 12 bucks a pack, right? Yeah. Well, when we got into Whole Foods, we moved them to 10 bucks. But yeah, still very expensive. Yeah, still expensive. And did you guys get pushback from initially from people who were saying, hey, why is this so expensive? How would you answer that question? Our answer is that we are using more expensive ingredients. Yeah.

And almond flour at the shelf is expensive. So I think there was also an association of people that were walking the baking aisle and they saw almond flour. I think there was a price correlation that people could have made with that. All right. So you get a couple of cases in Whole Foods. and this is in February of 2015 that they agree to do this. At what point do you become Siette Foods? When do you drop the name Must Be Nuddy and become, and actually get a, I mean, no offense, but get a great name.

When do you drop that name? Did that happen shortly after you got into Whole Foods? Ish. So we ended up going through an accelerator here in town called Skew. You got like you applied to to become part of this accelerator. Yeah, we, so we were essentially just dissecting our business. And I think one of the most meaningful exercises that we did was put everything we were for on one half of a whiteboard and everything we were against on another half of a whiteboard. And then we actually got to talking to one of the mentors.

He told us that like, we should really understand who we. are and then leverage that in the marketplace. And I think what he meant by understanding who you are is we had been producing this tortilla and it was authentic because this is what we grew up eating. So we ended up coming to Siette because the number of family members that we have in our family and using Spanish. It was kind of written there the whole time, like G7 athletics. Like family is so much a part of who we are.

And Siette was the representation for that. Yeah. So, all right. So you guys, you've got your name. And I guess another part of this accelerator program was also helping you to get ready to raise money from potential investors. Because you guys were starting to get to that point, right? Yeah, for sure. And we ended up at the end, we did a pitch.

Like, we pitched to a room of investors. we did end up raising money about a few months after the accelerator ended. I think it's about a million dollars that you raised, right? Yeah, we raised a million dollars from a few angel investors here in town and then a natural foods broker who's based out of Chicago. Yeah. And we were really trying to raise money for a pretty specific reason. We wanted to make sure that we could buy a piece of equipment that could help us

make the jump from manufacturing by hand to utilizing a machine that would automate a good chunk of the process. And by the way, you guys were still making the tortillas, or did you now have other people making them for you? I think at that point we had hired like 10 people to help make the tortillas on a daily basis. Got it. Yeah, and right around that time, we end up flying up to Baltimore because this is, This investor, this natural foods broker, had gotten us a meeting with Whole Foods up in Baltimore at Natural Products Expo East. And so we met with this guy, Dwight Richmond. He was the Whole Foods buyer for us.

And we had been told like, hey, he doesn't, you know, he's not going to have much expression. He's just going to meet with you. And so just do your pitch and don't expect much. And by the way, was he like a Mid-Atlantic regional buyer? Or was he a national buyer? No, he was a national buyer. National. Okay.

So we end up going to Baltimore and we're making this pitch. And I'll never forget because Dwight ended up cracking a smile. Like he laughed a little bit, which was exciting to me. And then he ended up saying like, yeah, I'm going to tell the regions that they should take this product. Wow. And so for us, that's like, we're super excited. Yeah. I remember like high-fiving because you feel so good.

And our parents are like, oh, my gosh. that was awesome. And then Vettel gets a phone call. And she looks at me. And if this is wrong, Vettel, let me know. But I remember you looking at me and you just passed the phone. Yeah. And you passed the phone to me.

So she passes the phone to me. And I'm like, okay, uh-huh, uh-huh. Who was on the other line? It was our regional distributor, Labat. And so Labat distributed to the southwest region of whole foods. And so what they were telling us was, hey, you know that pallet of product that you shipped us so that we could ship it to Whole Foods? Yeah, it's all moldy. Wow. This was the stuff you were going to ship to the Whole Foods in Texas, right? Yep. And that palette of tortillas was moldy?

Yeah, so the entire palette of product, I guess hadn't been kept to temperature. We had made one of a mistake, basically, which is don't store tortillas. in a produce warehouse because produce warehouses are humid, right? There's a lot of moisture and produce has mold spores on it. So our distributor was telling us, hey, we're going to throw this away and you got to figure out how to replenish whole foods. And so we got on the first flight out of Baltimore, which is this 5.30 a.m. flight. We drove to the produce facility.

It was pretty devastating. It was a gut punch. It was so bizarre how it happened because I remember this moment. It was like euphoric. You're just excited. Whole Foods just said yes. They wanted our product to go national. And then, yeah, but you have moldy pallets of tortillas.

By the way, how much money is a palette? Like how much retail value did that have? So it must have been about like $20,000 to $30,000. that was unsaleable. And it was also, you know, Vetter mentioned that we had these individuals helping us make tortillas. It was also about half a month's production. But so what did you do? How did you, I mean, now you have to produce those tortillas that are going to go on the shelf.

So what did you do? We actually got back in the kitchen. So the team was still producing what we had to produce. And then I remember going back in there, my parents coming back. back up again and us just having to get back in the kitchen to produce more tortillas. Yeah. I actually think mom took some time off of work for like almost a week so that we could just be in the kitchen every single day making tortillas.

Wow. So clearly you guys kind of get through this crisis moment because I think at this point you start to ramp up to sell to other Whole Foods regions in the U.S., right? I mean, and presumably they still want to go forward with you, right? Yeah, so we got lucky because what ended up happening was they had their regional call and four regions ended up being very excited about the product. And so January of 2016, we ended up launching in four regions. And I have to imagine at this point you're out of the like the co-working kitchen and you're in a like a bigger facility, right? Like a copacking facility.

So did you find one? So even getting to that point of finding the manufacturer was tough. This was kind of a little bit of a coincidence, but one of my really good friends from Laredo, she had told me about this family friend of hers that owned this manufacturing facility in Austin, and I should reach out to them just to see if they had advice. And I was really terrified. I thought, well, why would I reach out to them? They're going to copy my idea.

Like, I'm not going to reach out to them. But my brother is just on his own. He had started researching different manufacturing opportunities and came across this company and went and knocked on their door, just like literally showed up at the facility and asked to talk to somebody. And it turned out that that was the same family friend. This is like, I guess, what you call like a commercial manufacturer and you give them your precise instructions and then they produce it for you. Yes. Yep. Yeah.

And I mean, this is an interesting dilemma, right? Because you had this great idea and this great product, and clearly, you know, there was a market for it. And you rightfully worried that maybe if you went and worked with a copaccapper, they would just steal your idea and make it themselves. But the reality is they usually don't do that because to start a brand from nothing is not easy. Yeah, but we had heard some horror stories. And I think we had heard enough horror stories. And I actually think, so I cold emailed the CEO of Annie's at the time, John Foraker. And I asked him for 30 minutes of his time.

And my question was, what's the biggest piece of advice that you might have to enough start brand? And his response was, run as fast as you can. If you have an innovative product, it'll probably get copied. and like the only thing that you have to play defense against that is building a brand and running as fast as you can. Right. And so I think we did just that. We were making hires and we were building this brand. And we felt that if we could do that, that that would be our best defense.

So you did end up going with this copacker, the co-packing manufacturer in Austin? Yep. Yeah, and they had never done anything other than flour and corn tortilla products and chips. So taking on this little almond flour tortilla company, I remember having to cry to the owners of this manufacturer and just telling them, please take us on, we need you. My shoulder hurts so bad. So I think partially having that friend connection. they felt really bad and decided to take us on.

So we ended up, you know, we bought a piece of equipment, we installed it, and then we were there every day basically with this manufacturer trying to make sure that we could get our product to run on this piece of equipment that we had bought. And the equipment was like, what, like a tortilla making machine? Oh, yeah. So I actually remember the product not actually running on the line until about a day before we had to ship it to the four regions of Whole Foods. Wow. So we were cutting it very close, and we were there until about three in the morning. But clearly this, I mean, if they weren't starting to make it until a few days before you were shipping it, it suggests that this was a much faster process than 10 tortilla makers. In a shared kitchen, right? And this is like a big, this is like a fast tortilla machine.

Yeah, it was amazing to see. Like, I was in awe the first time I saw the product running. And I could just picture myself, like, pressing each tortilla one by one by one. And you just saw these perfect tortillas. How much that would have hurt. You just had these perfect tortillas is dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping, next over next, something like that. Yeah. So it sounds like 2016. Your tortillas are kind of roll out into other whole foods around the country. And that's also the year where you start to develop your tortilla chips.

Yeah, I had an idea just based on kind of what I was doing in my own kitchen. I wasn't eating corn anymore. And if you're in Texas, I mean, any restaurant you go to, you're going to be served chips and salsa, even non-Mexican restaurants. That's just something that you eat as an appetizer. So I had already started, you know, taking our tortillas and cutting them up into triangles and either frying them up or putting them in the oven and creating my own chips. But the truth is, Mike kind of promised them to whole foods before I really had a product. They were like, hey, what are the things you guys have in the pipeline? You're like, oh, we got tons of.

We got tortilla chips. We got queso. We got enchilada sauce. Meantime, Veronica's like, what? A little bit. Yeah, so he came to me and he's like, remember you played around with chips a little bit? Well, Whole Foods wants them. So can you have a sample in two days or whatever it was?

So I literally just threw some stuff together that first time. And thankfully they were good enough for them to get approved. And in the meantime, while we were waiting for them to get on the shelf, I was able to experiment a lot more and pin a recipe down that we could work with. You know, I wonder when you, I mean, now you're making tortilla chips and you've got tortillas and there's more demand from whole foods. Were you guys profitable? Yeah, yeah, because we were, at that point in time, we were making enough money to grow the business sustainably. And we weren't making big bets beyond the innovation. And we were also lucky.

Like, my sister, I always say my sister is like a billion. dollar R&D department. And that's not what she gets paid. But we weren't have, like, we were able to do a lot of stuff in-house because we had this team of scrappy people. All right. So you are, obviously, you're in this kind of interesting position because you're growing, but sustainably.

And you can't supercharge it because you don't have the financing to do it. But I guess in 2019, you did accept a huge investment, $90 million from Stripe Group. Did they come to you? Did they say, hey, we were really interested in being involved with you guys? They actually reached out to us, and we started to build a relationship. And we ended up raising money from them because we saw this opportunity in the marketplace where we could supercharge the growth. And we shared several meals with them in our, like, cafe that we have at the office.

and I was having a conversation with one of them, and I told them, here's what I want you to know. We are building a billion-dollar Mexican-American food brand. We're not building the next tostitos. We're not building the next mission. We are building a billion-dollar iconic Mexican-American food brand. And sitting across the table, you know, my family was there and they were there. They said, that's exactly. why we want to partner with you

because we also see that opportunity. I mean, was this kind of mind-blowing that they were like, yeah, we want to put $90 million into this business. I mean, it's amazing, right? Because even at this point, I think when they invested in you guys, you just had like two or three people

who were doing sales. I mean, you were a tiny group of people where you just like, oh my God, this is insane. This is huge. Yeah. Yes, then, and still, I still feel like that, looking back on it almost a few years later. And with that investment, I mean, you can be everywhere. You can be a Costco and Walmart, and I think you are there now in those places.

Yeah, it's been a crazy two years. So we're now in a little over 16,000 retailers. We're in places like Kroger and Costco and Target and Walmart. And so it was, it was around that time, like right before we got the investment that we started, or VETL, created our cashew guess so. And we launched hot sauces. And we had started to really build out this full portfolio of Mexican-American food products. You know, what's so interesting to me about what you're doing is you're not competing against paleo or grain-free or products.

You're competing against other Mexican food products. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In lots of different categories, yeah. Today, Miguel, you're the CEO. Veronica, you are the president and you head up innovation. And I think your dad and sister Linda do legal. Your mom manages purchasing. And then your other siblings, Rebecca and Robert,

they handle customer service issues. Is that right? Yep. So this is truly a family business. I mean, everybody is now doing this full time. Yeah. Yeah, we have to succeed. We have to do well.

I mean, I hesitate to even ask this question because I think I know the answer, given the fact that you guys would do like air squats together and cross-fitting together and, you know, your backyard and stuff. Like, you guys really are like a YouTube family, but is there ever any tension? Like, do you guys ever argue about? you know, because running a business is stressful and intense. It is a, I mean, it's a business. And I think there are disagreements. There are arguments.

But we always take it back to our core values. And so our first core value, the one that we outlined right from the beginning, was family first, family second, business third. And like my mom wouldn't let us. keep doing this if we weren't getting along. So knowing that we have to end at that place, that we always have to get along, like there's going to be bumps in the road, but we're all kind of, we're all focused on this idea of building a Mexican-American food brand, and we're focused on doing it together,

which is the Junto Sés Mehrode part. And so we have to figure things out. When you guys think about this journey that you've gone on and, you know, all the things that happened from, Veronica, you were like teaching a class that you weren't really that interested in teaching at a college at a university in Laredo. And Miguel, you were sort of thinking about becoming a small town lawyer in Laredo. When you think about where you've come now, I mean, how much of that do you think is because of how hard you guys worked and how smart you are and how much do you, I don't know, shock it up to luck. Miguel? I don't know about it. What do you think? For me, personally, I feel like it's been a lot of luck and a lot of hard work.

But I feel like when I look back on everything that's happened, I've been. very lucky. I'm sure my brother has a different perspective. No, I think, I think we are very blessed. I think luck's a part of it, hard work's a part of it. But there is a team of 80 plus people that work at Sietta. And all along the way, I would say where we have been blessed or lucky, whatever you believe, that's such a big part of it and it's been because we've been able to work with amazing people. Especially when we were starting off, we were looking for mentors

and it had been my hope that I could find somebody who had done this before and maybe somebody like me, a woman of color, and that was really hard to find in our industry. So I think not being able to find these mentors ourselves, Mike and I decided pretty early on that we probably had to become that. So, you know, I hope that we're doing that today. I hope that we can be an example for other people, not just Mexican-Americans, but other people of color who, you know, are starting businesses.

And that would make me really happy to know that. That's Veronica Garza and Miguel Garza, co-founders of Siette family foods. In 2020, Siette hit two. $200 million in total retail sales in the U.S. And by the way, even though their original family gym G7 athletics closed down in 2015, they did open a small gym inside the Siette Foods office in Austin. And before the pandemic shut everything down, Miguel would actually lead CrossFit-style workouts most evenings for anyone in the company who wanted to join in.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you haven't subscribed to the show yet, please do so wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to write to us, our email address is H-I-B-T at npr.org. If you want to follow us on Twitter, we're at How I Built This or at Guy Raz. And my Instagram is at guy.org. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Rumtine Arablewe. Thanks also to Liz Metzker, Ferris Safari, Dareth Gales, J.C. Howard, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Janet Buzhong Lee.

I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR.