Meet Our Empresarios: Salsas El Paisano

Hacienda CDC’s Empresarios programming supports entrepreneurs to start, grow, and scale their businesses. Read more about our featured Empresario and learn about our amazing community of small business owners.

Business Name: El Paisano Salsas

Country of Origin: Michoacán, Mexico

Significance of Name:  The name is inherited from previous owners but to Margarita it stays relevant considering her roots and origins as an immigrant to the U.S. It is tradition for people from Latin America to call themselves or others alike, “Paisano”.

Goals for Business: Margarita hopes to continue to venture and grow in the packaged salsa business while continuing to grow her clientele at her restaurant. Things are uncertain considering the current circumstances but she is optimistic and that she will will continue to thrive or at least stay afloat. She also hopes to see her Salsas in as many local grocery store shelves as possible so she is also focused on branding and promotion.

Margarita’s Story

Meet Margarita Guzman, owner of Taqueria El Paisano and Salsas El Paisano. Originally from Michoacán, Mexico, she first moved to the Unites States twenty nine years ago, in 1991. She moved because her husband at the time, had been living in the U.S already as a resident so she wanted to join him. Unlike her husband however, she had to cross the border as an immigrant through the Arizona desert with the hopes of starting a new life and family.

When she first arrived she did not work much due her status, but as she met more people from her community she got connected to El Programa Hispano, who were kind enough to offer her work in child care. She did that for many year until her and her husband were in a car accident back in 1994. They received money as compensation and It was then when they decided to invest that money into a business in 1997. Since her husband had been working in the restaurant industry for many years they decided to buy a food cart, which they placed outside of a local dance club on Friday and Saturday nights. Initially the husband was the only one working the cart until about two years later when they had the opportunity to lease a physical location. A few years later they sold the business after personal issues let them to divorce a split assets. After a reasonable and smooth divorce, Margarita stayed with the business and the husband with the house. It is then that Margaritas entrepreneurial spirit sparked brighter. She now had to focus on all aspects of the business versus before when all she would do was help prep and make the salsas. Salsas which would eventually take off as a business of their own.

After taking over the business, Margarita began searching for help on properly running and growing her business. For many years she did everything on her own until 2017 when she found out about the Empresarios Program while visiting Hacienda’s CDC headquarters for help on a mortgage. She saw a flyer which promoted program and decided to enroll. She took Empresarios Bootcamp and successfully completed it that same year and has continued to participate in the one on one business advice coaching. She thanks the program and her business advisor, Adriana Lopez, for the help in learning how properly run the business and for helping her venture into the packaged products business as well .

Thanks to customer and peer feedback, Margarita had always wanted to package and sell her Salsas but never knew where to begin. Thanks to the knowledge, help, and connections from the Empresarios Program, Margarita was able to develop, test, and package her products and currently has three different packed salsas ready for the shelves.

About Taqueria El Paisano

Taqueria El Paisano is proudly a woman owned business, offering traditional Mexican food in Beaverton, Oregon. Established by prior owners, Margarita Guzman and her husband first took over the business to become self-employed and with the goals of expanding to other location together. With a long history in the food industry, their recipes and dishes were well accepted by their new community and slowly continued to grow. After a divorce, Margarita became the sole owner and decided to seek for help on how to properly manage and grow. All this was new to her since the husband would take care of everything before the divorce. With help form the Portland Mercado Empresarios Program she was able to learn key technical business skills which have helped her run her business till today, through COVID-19.

Prior to COVID-19, however, she began to venture into the packaged goods industry with three of her salsas. These are the: Avocado Salsa, Habanero Salsa, and the Chipotle Salsa which are now ready to hit the shelves. Sadly, most of her promotional opportunities for the salsas have vanished due to the virus, but she continues to focus on her restaurant business which now offers Take-out and delivery via Grubhub and Postmates!

Learn more about our Empresarios program and other businesses at the Portland Mercado.