When Juvenal Chavez Sr. and his wife went grocery shopping in the United States after emigrating from Mexico, they soon realized how different the process was here than it was in their home country.
There, it had been more personal and people seemed to care about you, but here, they felt lost in the masses.
“Businesses feed you as a statistic,” he says. “They feed you as one more number. They see you as the economic value that you represent to them.”
He also recognized that many stores tried to understand the Hispanic population and spent good money trying to do so.
“They hire consultants, and they hire people with the knowledge in the area in order to understand the most about these customers,” Chavez says. “I realized that, and I understood that that would be my competitive advantage against them in that area by knowing my customer, by knowing the wishes and desires and tastes for food, the different ingredients. I know the traditions and the language and culture. I can relate not only in the basic needs while in the store but also I relate to them in its totality as a whole experience.”
So Chavez, who had been a high school teacher in Mexico, decided to go into the retail industry. He started with just one small butcher shop about 20 years ago, and from there, he’s grown it into Mi Pueblo Foods, a $300 million grocery retail chain with 17 locations and plans to add three more by next year. The founder and CEO says that focusing on “el cariño y el respecto” — care and respect — when it comes to both employees and customers has been the key to his success and growth.
He says, “I’m in the people business — not the grocery business.”
