Ecuador’s Favorite Tuna Brand To Hispanics In USA ff

Stacked cases of Manzana and Tropical soda bottles, and cases of Van Camp’s tuna line the center of the Family Food Distributors Kearny warehouse, ready to be delivered to bodegas and groceries throughout the Northeast as temperatures climb.

The two-liter bottles will sell for $1.50 to $1.99 each, well above sale prices for Coke or Pepsi. But they will sell, says Patricia Castaneda- Mendez, because each cold, sugary swallow brings a taste of Ecuador, the home country of most people who buy it.

“They are very nostalgic products,” Castaneda-Mendez says. “It's the flavor we remember. In sodas, there's a big difference. Here, they use corn syrup. Over there, it's sugar, and that makes a big difference.”

Fifteen years after immigrating to the United States, Castaneda- Mendez is an entrepreneur, selling food and nostalgia -- a powerful combination. She and her husband, John Rivas, and her daughter, Andrea Castaneda, started Family Food Distributors in February 2002.
 
Castaneda-Mendez worked as a purchasing manager at two Hispanic food distributors, which, she took note, didn't sell Ecuadorian products. Rivas' family owns a restaurant in Ecuador, and Andrea Castaneda, a junior business management major at Rutgers University, interned with her mother's previous employer. Together, they have grown the company to 500 customers, one store, one order at a time.
 
“We're Ecuadorians and we saw a potential there,” Castaneda- Mendez says of the decision to take the leap into selling Ecuadorian favorites such as Van Camp's tuna, Real sardines and Guitig mineral water, as well as some Costa Rican products.

There were other reasons, too. The desire to run a successful business on their own terms after years of working long days and weekends, sometimes two or three jobs at once. Castaneda-Mendez also hopes her daughters, Andrea and 11-year-old Daniela, won't have to work as hard as she has.

“I always put 100 percent to my job working for other people. And then it gets to a point where you say you want to do your own thing,” Castaneda-Mendez says. “I had a good job. I was making sixty- something thousand dollars a year, but I didn't see anywhere else I could go. My boss was the owner, so I was never going to be the owner. I got a nice raise every year. But we wanted to do something on our own. It's the American Dream. You can do your own thing and you can have a better economic future for your family, for your kids.”

The family is following a well-established trend. Census data have shown immigrants are more active entrepreneurs than native-born Americans. And the U.S. Small Business Administration reports between 1988 and 1998 the number of ‘primary self-employed” Hispanics increased 30.1 percent, Asian business owners increased 56.5 percent and “whites” 1.1 percent.

Castaneda-Mendez, Rivas and Castaneda knew the Ecuadorian market was fairly well-served near their home, so they searched the Internet for Hispanic grocery stores in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Then they hit the highway. Rivas and Castaneda drove a van packed with a few favorite Ecuadorian and Mexican products to Stamford, Conn., on Feb. 18, 2002.
“As soon as you get off the exit, there are two stores, corner bodegas,” Castaneda says. “We sold to one of them. The other, it took us several tries to get in there.”

They made their first sale, then climbed back in the van and drove to the next town. They reinvested the company's early profits into the business while Castaneda-Mendez and Rivas kept working in jobs outside the company and Castaneda ran the office while attending college full time. Now, they all work full time and they have three part-time employees.
 
“They are a textbook example for others on how to start a business,” says Denis Rasugu, a counselor with the Rutgers-Newark Small Business Development Center. “They bootstrapped and sacrificed by using their own financing.”

This year, they got a pivotal break when they were named the exclusive Northeast distributor of Van Camp's tuna, a favorite among Ecuadorians. They are working their way into the New York market in the Bronx with the tuna line.

In Ecuador the Van Camp’s brand is owned and produced by the tuna company Inepaca of Manta. But in the States it is owned by Chicken of the Sea, Van Camp's parent company, usually awards exclusive distributing rights for small areas, says Anthony Montoya, senior vice president of sales for the San Diego-based company.

“We gave them four states,” he says -- New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. “They just have this passion to get out there and sell the products they are selling. We were so taken by that.” The Van Camp’s tuna sold by Chicken of the Sea in not produced in Ecuador, but canned in Thailand.

Family Food Distributors has made it this far with no loans. But Castaneda-Mendez attended the New Jersey Economic Development Authority's Entrepreneurial Training Institute, and they will be applying for an EDA loan. The family business is signing up accounts every week, and the larger stores are requesting credit accounts, which cash flow can't accommodate.

Along the way, they have discovered an unexpected bonus. “Even working as many hours as we do ... we're much closer now than we were working for American corporate companies,” Castaneda- Mendez says.

She missed all of Daniela's school programs before starting the company. Now she is able to take her mother to her doctor appointments, rather than rely on neighbors and friends. “We are not making as much money yet as we did working for someone else, but it just feels different,” Castaneda-Mendez says. “We're working hard, but we are not looking at the clock saying, 'Oh, it's 9 p.m. It's 10 p.m.’ We’re just here until we finish what we have to do. It feels good. It just feels good.”