3 Latino entrepreneurs who left their mark

El que no arriesga no gana.

You have heard that phrase your whole life. Maybe from your mom when you were too scared to try something, or from a friend in high school who was trying to hype you up before a baseball or soccer game.

Yet that all-too-common phrase strikes a chord with one type of person at the very core of our identity: the American entrepreneur.

Our nation’s history is packed with the stories of countless small-business owners and innovators who bet everything on an idea and built immense prosperity. They took a risk and won big.

And Latinos have been leading the way for a long time. For decades, Latino entrepreneurs have bet on themselves, worked tirelessly to turn their ideas into the American Dream, and succeeded.

Here are the stories of three Latino entrepreneurs who made it, and a clear example of how Latino small businesses are helping write the next chapter of American prosperity.

Tapatío: The home recipe that took over the country

In the late 1960s, Jose Luis Saavedra lost his job at an aerospace parts plant in Los Angeles. As he left his office with a million questions and an uncertain future, he got an idea: sell the homemade hot sauce his wife made, the one his coworkers always went crazy about.

He got to work, rented a small production space in Maywood, and his whole family rolled up their sleeves.

His 13-year-old son, Luis, twisted on caps and stuck on labels, and father and son drove a van up and down Los Angeles, loading and unloading by hand, talking corner stores in East LA into taking a case. It took five years for Saavedra to finally quit the two part-time jobs he was working to keep the business alive.

The recipe behind their success was guarded so closely that they never wrote it down. For 55 years, it passed from one Saavedra to the next in closed rooms. When they finally put it on paper this year to sell the company, roughly 40 buyers came forward with offers.

Those little red bottles that Luis used to pack with his dad are on tables across the country now.

Goya: A brand name bought for one dollar

Every time you go to a market and walk down the Hispanic aisle, you’ll see the Goya brand there.

Like many businesses, this industry titan began small — very small.

Don Prudencio Unanue left Spain for Puerto Rico at 18, then moved to New York and, in 1936, opened a small storefront on Duane Street selling Spanish olives, olive oil, and sardines.

That same year, the Spanish Civil War broke out, cutting his supply lines and nearly ending Unanue’s still small business. Instead of waiting, Unanue bought a shipment of Moroccan sardines, and he and his wife started repackaging the tins by hand in a rented warehouse.

He also realized that very few people knew how to pronounce “Unanue,” so he decided to buy the rights to a catchier, easier name for his brand. He bought the name of the supplier that was selling him the sardines: Goya.

Today, Goya is the largest Latino-owned food company in America.

Six banks said no. Her parents said yes.

Linda Alvarado grew up in Albuquerque, the only girl among six children, in a three-room adobe house her father built with no heat and no indoor plumbing. When she got to college, she quickly looked for work to help pay for her education.

She talked her way onto the campus landscaping crew instead of taking the cafeteria or library job that an administrator suggested. After she graduated, a construction management company in Los Angeles gave her an interview and a job.

She spent long hours learning everything she could about the construction industry. She took courses in estimating, surveying, and computerized scheduling.

In 1976, she went out on her own. There were no set-aside programs for women or minority contractors then, and six banks turned her down. Her parents mortgaged their small adobe home and lent her $2,500, and she only found out after paying them back that they had borrowed it at a high interest rate.

Her firm went on to build schools, hotels, high-rises, Denver International Airport, and the stadium where the NFL’s Denver Broncos play. In 1992, she became the first Latino owner of a Major League Baseball team when she bought into the Colorado Rockies.

Latino entrepreneurs are building our future

The hard work and success of Latino entrepreneurs go far beyond these three stories.

Between 2018 and 2023, Latino-owned employer businesses grew 44%, and their revenue rose 36%, outpacing the country as a whole.

The drive to build something new is why America is one of the most prosperous and successful countries in the history of the world.

Small-business owners are the heart of our nation. Every day, they put into practice the core values upon which America was founded.

It’s time to thank them for their work.

Recognize a small-business owner who took a risk, created jobs from the ground up, or showed up for your neighborhood when it mattered.