When Lindita Torres-Winters was a girl working the fields alongside other migrant farmworkers, she dreamed big.
“Someday, I will make something out of these tomatoes,” she remembers saying.
At the time, her sister laughed and told her, “Quit your dreaming, and get back to work.”
Now in her 40s and living in Aurora, Torres-Winters has brought her vision to life. Her Linditas’ instant salsa mix sells in more than 500 stores, including Albertson’s, King Soopers and Safeway, in eight states.
Before the end of the year, she expects to have it in H.E. Butt Grocery Co. stores throughout Texas. She also is working on a deal to export the mix to Canada.
Salsa is a $1 billion-plus industry in the U.S., and the condiment’s future looks bright, said Dave DeWitt, author of more than 30 books on chiles and spicy foods.
“More and more middle Americans like it. The people who never would have eaten it 10 years ago are no longer afraid of chile peppers,” said DeWitt, publisher of Fiery Foods & BBQ magazine and self-proclaimed “pope of peppers.”
Competition in the industry is fierce, with as many as 2,000 companies vying for customers, DeWitt said.
“We see companies come and go all the time,” he said.
Torres-Winters is optimistic that her ability to blend herbs and chiles will ensure her survival.
“I have a Wolf stove, six burners, a grill and two ovens. And honey, can I cook,” she said.
She was born in a small Illinois farming community, one of nine children. By the time she was 6, she was working in fields from Texas to Wisconsin as the family followed seasonal crops.
When she was 16, her father was badly injured in a factory accident, so she left school to work full time. She later earned a general equivalency diploma through a federally funded program for seasonal farmworkers and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin.
Torres-Winters went to work in the food-service business, eventually managing the kitchen and restaurant at the International Athletic Club in Aurora. Then she began to notice that the quality of salsa was inconsistent.
“I started developing a formula and a spice mix,” she said, and in 1995 she founded Linditas’ Inc.
Rocky Mountain Spice Co. in Denver manufactures the mix for her company.
Small-business consultant Ag nes Talamantez Carroll said she thinks the product will be successful in Canada.
“We are finding out that there is a larger market than we thought in Canada for Mexican products,” said Carroll, chief executive of Cultura Business Communications, a company that helps entrepreneurs, most of them Hispanic, establish and expand their businesses.
Torres-Winters wouldn’t talk about her privately held company’s revenues other than to say they have doubled every year since she launched.
Salsa isn’t her only claim to fame. She hosts a cooking show on KBDI-Ch. 12 and writes a cooking column that runs in the Aurora Daily Sun. Torres-Winters said some have suggested she could be the Latina version of Martha Stewart or the Food Network’s Rachael Ray.
Today, she shows no sign of reining in her dreams.
“This would be perfect to sell in India,” she said, pointing to a bag of her spice mix. “It is time for me to step it up and go.”
