When Hector Saldivar moved from Mexico to the United States, he wasn’t satisfied with the hot sauces he found on store shelves. He started Tia Lupita Foods to introduce American consumers to the robust flavor of his mother’s signature hot sauce.
Hector Saldivar remembers when strangers would knock on his mother's door in Mexico.
They weren't looking to borrow a cup of sugar, as the old saying goes, but rather a cup of hot sauce.
"My mom, was already pretty famous back home with the hot sauce she made," Saldivar said. "This family recipe hot sauce."
Others at her doorstep asked for that recipe, or for the opportunity to go into business with her. Highly protective of the family recipe, she refused to share it until the proper business partner came knocking: her son.
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"My mom was super happy that she was finally going to be able to pass the recipe on," Saldivar told Ashley Chaparro of "Bísness School" -- an NBC podcast that highlights the success stories of Latino entrepreneurs.
Saldivar turned the hot sauce recipe into the brand Tia Lupita Foods, a Mexican-inspired line of healthy foods that also includes chips and tortillas. He took the products from his mother's doorstep to local stores, and then to national retailers and "Shark Tank."
"It's really hard to grasp and understand the magnitude of maintaining that business and the business expectation of a thousand stores," Saldivar said. "Little by little, baby steps...and then normal steps, and then you can start to trot and then run."
Business
Running a business, however, was new to him.
In Mexico, he worked for a car battery manufacturer, the top ingredient for which is sulfuric acid. He went on to study abroad, receiving care packages from his mother that would include her hot sauce, which he would share with college friends.
He later joined what at the time was an emerging food brand founded in Mexico City called Klass Time. There he sold frescas, a powdered drink mix he likened to Kool-Aid but with Mexican flavors.
"That was my initiation into food and beverage," he said. "It was an entry-level role. I was in sales. I was literally a door-to-door salesman."
Saldivar was now the one knocking on strangers' doors.
He advanced to larger companies, joining Nestle and then Diamond Foods, which in 2015 was acquired by Snyder's-Lance. To remain with the company, he would have to move from the Bay Area to North Carolina.
"That was that fork in the road," he said.
His options, he said, were to either move to the East Coast and remain with a big company or stay in the Bay Area and search for a new job. Or...
"Start this venture," he said. "This thing that people had been kind of like pinching at me, pinching me, pinching me: 'You should start your own hot sauce brand.' … I picked the road less traveled."
That road included launching a self-funded operation in 2019 that ultimately put his hot sauce in local stores. He was soon discovered by a distributer, his products going on to reach the shelves of Walmart, Whole Foods, Wegman’s and other retailers.
Demand outgrew the operation, meaning it was time to share his mother’s recipe with a manufacturer to scale the business.
“From making it myself to going to a manufacturer, then you have to give away this recipe that you’re really kind of like being delegated and trusted with,” he said. “You have to be very careful.”
Especially when swimming with sharks.
Saldivar appeared on the hit ABC business reality television series “Shark Tank” in hopes of securing a deal with one of its investors. Early in his sales pitch, one shark didn’t seem all that interested in taking a bite.
“The first thing I said is, ‘Raise your hand if you like to eat tacos,’” Saldivar said of his pitch on the show. “What happens? Daymond John says, ‘I hate tacos.’ …. You could hear the record scratching in my head. Errrrrrr. Like, what? What taco truck ran over your puppy that made you hate tacos?”
Kevin O’Leary -- the shark nicknamed “Mr. Wonderful” – liked tacos and the company. Saldivar secured a deal with O’Leary for $500,000 and gained national exposure from the millions who viewed the episode.
“I remember, watching the online sales happening live while the episode aired on my Shopify and it was something incredible, like we had 50,000 visitors,” he said.
Word of mouth, Saldivar said, is the most efficient way to grow a business. Whether that’s by knocking on a stranger’s door, appearing on a television show, or buying his own product at the grocery store and giving it to the customer in line behind him -- all of which he has done.
“It's all part of the hustle,” he said. “It's all part of trying to get your brand and your products in people's hands.”
