Los Angeles – In 1963, Enrique Gonzalez Aguayo came to the United States where he began working in the fields, and with the money he managed to save he was able to buy a small business, which he has now expanded into a chain of 23 supermarkets in Southern California.
“We’ve been in this market since 1985 and we’re opening a new store that will have 1,200 square feet,” Gonzalez told EFE.
“I remember that we sold $15 (worth of products) per day and I kept working hard for nine months until my wife told me ‘close it,'” he added.
But as time went by more customers began to come and the initial project – which was a butcher shop – transformed itself into the first Vallarta supermarket in the San Fernando Valley.
“Earlier, I had a nightclub called Puerto Vallarta (for the Mexican resort city),” he explained. “That’s where the name comes from.”
Gonzalez recalled that “I was tired of the late nights in that business,” and after a fire burned the club down, he decided to rent the place out for $600, which he then invested in his first store.
The first time Gonzalez gave a try to running his own business was in 1974.
“I had about $2,000 saved and I started with a bar I called La Cabaña. It was a tough business … because sometimes there were even fights,” he recalled.
When he came to the United States for the first time, in the mid-1960s, he did so as a “bracero” under the guest worker program and started out in the fields harvesting asparagus and tomatoes.
“I liked it, because life in Mexico is very poor,” said Gonzalez, who would later go on to work for the Corky’s restaurant chain.
“At the start, I felt bad because I said: if I put on an apron they’re going to call me a ‘maricon’ (a pejorative denoting a homosexual or effeminate man), because in Mexico only the women wear them,” said the 62-year-old Gonzalez.
“But I put it on and started working, washing dishes, cleaning floors, washing jars,” he said.
He worked there for 14 years, and the experience was his schooling for later starting his own businesses.
In 1986, when the first Vallarta supermarket was making a profit, he decided to open another branch in another part of the San Fernando Valley.
Then, after he and his five brothers, who were working for MGM movie studios, pooled their savings the sextet invested in more stores.
“We were all hard workers. I recall that I was working up to 18 hours a day. And I enjoyed working,” he said.
Twenty-one years have passed since the opening of the first store, and the venture – using the savings and the hard work of the entire family – has now ballooned into a chain of 23 grocery stores.
“The key to success is that the profits of the business have to be reinvested in it,” said Gonzalez, whose stores have spread throughout Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.
Store manager Jose Briones said that the success of the supermarkets is based on the good service they provide to their Hispanic clientele.
“Because here they can find the products to which we are accustomed, everything Latino, which they can’t find in the U.S. supermarkets,” he said.
“This chain has dedicated itself to (providing) the basics, the necessities and the products of the Latin American public,” Gonzalez said.
With regard to non-Latino customers, he said that “they are used to going to Tijuana to get to know the products Mexico has, but afterwards they learn that the same things they find in Tijuana are in Vallarta stores,” he said.
