YouSaid · the spoken record

Miguel Garza

lines on the record: 56
first: 2021-03-15
most recent: 2021-03-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, I think we are very blessed. Luck's a part of it. Hard work's a part of it. But there is a team of eighty plus people that work at Siete. And all along the way, I would say where we have been blessed or lucky, whatever you believe. That's such a big part of it. And it's been because we've been able to work with amazing people.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a business, and I think there are disagreements, there are arguments, but we always take it back to our core values. And so our first core value, the one that we outlined right from the beginning, was family first, family second, business third. And, like, my mom wouldn't let us keep doing this if we weren't getting along. So knowing that we have to end at that place, that we always have to get along, like there's going to be bumps in the road, but we're all kind of focused on this idea of building a Mexican-American food brand. And we're focused on doing it together, which is the junta sees me hot apart. And so we have to figure things out.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's been a crazy two years. So we're now in a little over 16,000 retailers. We're in places like Kroger and Costco. Target and Walmart. And so it was around that time, like right before we got the investment that we started, or Vettel created our cashew gessel. And we launched hot sauces. And we had started to really build out this full portfolio of Mexican-American food products.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They actually reached out to us and we started to build a relationship. And we ended up raising money from them because we saw this opportunity in the marketplace where we could supercharge the growth. And we shared several meals with them in our cafe that we have at the office. I was having a conversation with one of them and I told them, here's what I want you to know. We are building a billion dollar Mexican-American food brand. We're not building the next toasted. We're not building the next mission. We are building a billion dollar iconic Mexican American food brand. And sitting across the table, you know, my family was there and they were there. They said, that's exactly. Why we want to partner with you because we also see that opportunity.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, because we were at that point in time, we were making enough money to grow the business sustainably. And we weren't making big bets beyond the innovation. And we were also lucky. My sister, I always say my sister is like a billion dollar R&D department. And that's not what she gets paid. But we weren't have, like, we were able to do a lot of stuff in-house because we had this team of scrappy people”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, so I actually remember the product not actually running on the line until about a day before we had to ship it to the four regions of Whole Foods. Wow. So we were cutting it very close and we were there till about three in the morning.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we ended up bought a piece of equipment, we installed it, and then we were there every day, basically, with this manufacturer trying to make sure that we could get our product to run on this piece of equipment that we had bought.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but we had heard some horror stories, and I think we had heard enough horror stories. And I actually think, so I cold emailed the CEO of Annie's at the time, John Forker, and I asked him for 30 minutes of his time. And my question was, what's the biggest piece of advice that you might have to Enough Start Brand? And his response was Run as fast as you can. If you have an innovative product, it'll probably get copied. And like the only thing that you have to play defense against that is building a brand and running as fast as you can. And so I think we did just that. We were making hires and we were building this brand. And we felt that if we could do that, that that would be our best defense.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we got lucky because what ended up happening was they had their regional call and four regions ended up being very excited about the product. And so January of twenty sixteen. We ended up launching in four regions.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We actually got back in the kitchen, so the team was still producing what we had to produce. And then I remember going back in there, my parents coming back up again and us just having to get back in the kitchen to produce more tortillas.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it must have been about like 20 to 30 thousand dollars that was unsaleable. And it was also, you know, Vetel mentioned that we had these individuals helping us make tortillas. It was also about half a month's production.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the entire palette of product, I guess, hadn't been kept to temperature. We had made one of a mistake basically, which is don't store tortillas in a produce warehouse because produce warehouses are humid, right? There's a lot of moisture. Produce has mold spores on it. So our distributor was telling us, hey, we're going to throw this away and you got to figure out how to replenish Whole Foods. And so we got on the first flight out of Baltimore, which is this 5.30 AM flight. We drove to the produce facility. It was pretty devastating. It was a gut punch. It was so bizarre how it happened because I remember this moment It was like euphoric. You're just excited. Whole Foods just said yes. They wanted our product to go national. And then yeah, but you have moldy palettes of tortillas.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was our regional distributor, Labat. And so Labat distributed to the southwest region of Whole Foods. And so what they were telling us was, hey, you know that palate of product that you shipped us so that we could ship it to Whole Foods? Yeah, it's all moldy.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was a national buyer So we end up going to Baltimore and we're making this pitch. And I'll never forget because Dwight ended up cracking a smile like he laughed a little bit, which was exciting to me. And then he ended up saying like, yeah, I'm going to tell the regions that they should take this product. And so, for us, that's like, we're super excited. I remember high fiving because you feel so good and our parents are like, oh my gosh, that was awesome. And then Bettel gets a phone call. And she looks at me. And if this is wrong, Bettel, let me know. But I remember you looking at me and you just pass the phone. My face went white? Yeah. And you pass the phone. Did you look like a ghost?”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and right around that time we end up flying up to Baltimore because this investor, this natural foods broker, had gotten us a meeting with Whole Foods up in Baltimore at Natural Products Expo East. And so we met with this guy, Dwight Richmond. He was the Whole Foods buyer for us, and we had been told like, hey, he doesn't, you know, he's not going to have much expression. He's just going to meet with you. And so just do your pitch and don't expect much.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We raised a million dollars from a few angel investors here in town and then a natural foods broker who's based out of Chicago. We were really trying to raise money for a pretty specific reason. We wanted to make sure that we could buy a piece of equipment that could help us make the jump from manufacturing by hand to utilizing a machine that would automate a good chunk of the process.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for sure, and we ended up at the end we. We pitched to a room of investors, and we did end up raising money about a few months after the accelerator ended.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we so we were Essentially, just dissecting our business. And I think one of the most meaningful exercises that we did was put everything we were for on one half of a whiteboard and everything we were against on another half of a whiteboard. And then we actually got to talking to one of the mentors. He told us that we should really understand who we are and then leverage that in the marketplace. And I think what he meant by understanding who you are is we had been producing this tortilla, and it was authentic because this is what we grew up eating. So we ended up coming to Siete because the number of family members that we have in our family and using Spanish, it was kind of written there the whole time, like G7 athletics. family is so much a part of who we are and Siete was the representation for that”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our answer is that we are using more expensive ingredients. And almond flour at the shelf is expensive. So I think there was also an association of people that were walking the baking aisle and they saw almond flour. I think there was a price correlation that people could have made with that.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, when we got into Whole Foods, we moved them to 10 bucks. But yeah, still very expensive. It's still expensive. Still expensive”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We put the Torillas on the shelf, and this is going to sound redundant, but we had built up this following on Instagram and on Facebook. And I remember taking a picture and then coming back the next day. And the same thing had happened. Like we had sold through the product that we put on the shelf. And people were really excited about it, and we were based out of Austin. So I think there was this added excitement about being local.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then they Yes. And it came from our local buyer who bought for the five Austin stores. And so I think that is, I don't know, luck is very important. You know, we were working hard. We were making tortillas night and day and on the weekends and trying to build this thing. But we couldn't get in the door of Whole Foods. It ended up being a fan of the brand that kickstarted this.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whole Foods from Whole Foods. And I kid you not that we got an email the next day or the day after. And it was a forwarded email from a forwarded email from a forwarded email”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'm having this moment where like I remember calling my sister and my mom and I'm telling them like, hey, we just got this message. She told me that we should be expecting to hear something soon.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What did you, I mean Yeah, we actually kept on trying, sending emails. And then I was driving around doing deliveries one time and this individual messaged us and said, hey, big fan, I buy him at the Wheatsville that y'all started at like I live really close. And I'm actually a director or producer and we're doing this film with Whole Foods. And so I saw John Mackey the other day and I told him he should carry your tortillas. And so the deal is that I didn't know much about the food industry. And so even the mention of that name, I had to Google. No, no. So I Google and I'm like, oh my God.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, so we were trying to drum up more business and we were trying to do it in a way that we could manage against. And so obviously the big account that we really wanted was Whole Foods. And I made the mistake of showing up to Whole Foods office and leaving a Ziploc bag of tortillas. And I thought, oh, this worked for Wheatsville. But when I did that at Whole Foods, they thought that we weren't a real business. And so they were like, yeah, we're not going to carry you because you just showed up with a Ziploc.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It really started to take off. So the reason we were in there every night is because at this co-op at Wheatsville, we had become the number one selling item in the entire refrigerated case.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At that point in time, that would have been 30 packs of tin. So 300, and they were selling like $12 at the shelf at Wheatsville. Again, that was super exciting, but it basically it meant that for the next year, my sister and my now brother-in-law and my parents and my wife were going to a kitchen every weekend to.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and we really like what was crazy was we were trying to make as many as possible because So we had put these tortillas on the shelf in May of 2014 at Wheatsville, and we put two cases to the shelf, and we had learned a little bit from owning the gym on marketing a service-based business. So what we did was we took a picture, we posted it to Instagram, and we posted it to Facebook. And I came back the next day, and we were sold out of two cases.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I actually, like, I think along the way, we got really lucky finding this gluten-free kitchen, Better Bites Bakery. The individual's name was Leah Lopez, and she was kind of like a guardian angel in our first few weeks, months of getting started because she had a food business and she had already figured out a lot of this stuff. And so we would ask her questions like, hey, what stores are you in? And so she was letting us initially use her kitchen weekends And then eventually nights and weekends.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I actually think Ziploc bags, not Ziploc, but like twist tie top bags, stickers for the label. Like we went as scrappy as possible. Yeah, it was probably maybe like under just to get going, maybe under two thousand.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So 2014 Finding a gluten free kitchen, I think there were maybe two in Austin and we found one that was about probably 10 minutes outside of Austin.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so he ended up telling us on the spot, he said, I like this, go to our website and on our website there's a list of everything you need to have in order to be a vendor for us. And I remember we walked out, we called by mom on speaker. She's like, oh my gosh, how was it? And we told her, like, yeah, they accepted the tortillas. Like, now we got to go do everything else. And immediately my mom started crying. I'm so proud of you guys. I can't believe you did that. That is so awesome. But that was really just the beginning because from there was, oh, now we have to figure out how to start a business. And we've done the gym thing, but the food business is very...”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think what we had done was we didn't have access to a stovetop. So we did probably one of the things that we would never do again, which is microwave the tortillas. I think my sister was probably like, no, please, like we got to present them in a way like do they have a kitchen or can we put them on a cast iron? And I'm maybe more of the 85% is good enough person. I was like, no, it's fine. Microwave. He's going to try it. They're good.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It wasn't a very difficult, and they're good about working with supporting local vendors. And so this guy named Chris Moore, I think is his name. comes to the front of the store and we hand him a tortilla. And I knew that we had to get him to try it right on the spot. And so he grabbed the bag and he was about to head to his office again. And I remember stopping him and saying, come on, man, like you got to try this in front of us because I want to know what your actual feedback is. Like, I think it's really good. I want to know what you think. And so me and my sister are there, he tries the tortilla. And you could tell he went from maybe like skeptic to, oh my gosh, tell me again what's in this. And my sister explained to him like it's paleo, it's vegan, almond flour, and tapioca.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's one of the only food co-ops in Texas. They have two locations. And it was just after Christmas, so into the new year. And I remember me and Vettel meeting in the parking lot. We walked in. We had a very small appointment with this buyer.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was. Let's go get a customer. And that's going to be our proof point. If we can go get a customer, a retailer that's going to put our product on the shelf, then that's going to be an indicator that maybe we should pursue this further.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, kind of. And I think at the time, I actually didn't envision myself being a part of it. I just knew that she really didn't like her job. And what I was realizing was, man, life's too short to not chase what you really want to do or to stay somewhere that you're not happy. And so it wasn't selfishly motivated at that time. Maybe it was later when I asked to join the company because I needed a job. But at that point in time, I was mainly telling her, like, look, and I think this is what got her over the edge. I told her that she would, if she didn't start this business or didn't at least attempt, that she was going to be more upset seeing another person put this product to market and having to buy that product. Like having to buy an almond tortilla from somebody else knowing that it could have been her.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think my sister would tell you I snuck into the business at some point in time. I think I pulled the baby of the family card. But no, I had graduated from law school in 2012. I'm here in Austin. And then I saw like if you walk into cafes in this city or you walk into Whole Foods and you're just seeing these people that are building businesses from behind a MacBook. And that fascinated me. I actually started to sell my sisters tortillas to the gym that I was a coach at. It was around that time where I started having conversations with Vero and the conversation usually centered on Her saying that she wanted to do something new, me saying that I thought the tortillas could be successful, getting stuck at this point of her not being able to make the leap because, I mean, really because of health insurance. I think that was like a big thing.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was just going to say that there's like creative genius where people are like, I don't know how it works, but like I do it and it works. And if you were to see my sister in the kitchen the entire time she would be telling you don't watch me I don't know what I'm doing I don't know what I'm measuring and then at the end you're like holy crap this tastes good what do you mean you don't know what you're doing when I don't know what I'm doing it doesn't taste like this”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My mom, my other sister, and my dad. So this was really about like the gym became this after work place to exercise, hang out, and be with family.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think that's an important distinction. Everybody was working on it, but like Vettel still had a full-time job at the university. And my sister Becky still had a full-time job at the university, as did my...”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, at that point in time, it's like a monthly fee. It's probably anywhere from $75 to $115 a month if my memory serves me right. And you can only have so many people in this space. So at some point you outgrow the space, and then you have overhead, and then you're paying coaches. And then at some point you're trying to pay yourself. And I'm speaking, again, mostly from afar because my brother started to manage it full-time. But it is a tough business. That's my own experience.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, luckily my parents were giving enough and they had a little bit of savings for the gym and so they bought the equipment and for them it was like okay now we have a gym that we come to and then after that after the equipment expense it was I think that's when we really learned a business has to make money in order to be sustainable”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's freaking hard It was the topic of conversation at our dinner table for about five straight years. Okay, it's a business. How do we grow it? What do we do? Are we missing anything? Maybe we need to go get another certification. Maybe we have to offer another class because it was really like the model is service-based, right? Personal training, but in a group setting. And that kind of business is hard. Service-based businesses are hard. So I remember just feeling constantly defeated, but also very excited about the community that we were building at the gym.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the gym just started growing at that point. Everybody was actually mom and dad were there every evening. And then I think my older brother, he maybe saw that there was some fun happening. And he eventually moved from Sugarland to Laredo because we needed somebody to manage the gym full time. So yeah, we jumped through the hoops, became a business, had a gym, and were coaching people in the evenings”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think so. I don't think it was ridiculous, but I do remember feeling a little bit of anxiety because both of my sisters were texting me saying, hey, we found a space and we're about to actually make this a gym. And they just did it. G7 athletics was born.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I wanted to stay in town. There was all this momentum and everybody, like the whole family's together. Everybody's having fun. And the gym was born at that point.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really wasn't an intent at first, but we were all working out together a lot. And so we had like a couple of my friends, two or three of my sisters, my mom. We had a couple of neighbors and then our neighbor's friend. So there were 20 people in the backyard, and I actually had a fight. My dad was an attorney. And we had this argument where I told him, hey, I don't want to go to law school. I really like this gym business type stuff. I'm going to do that instead, and he looked at me and he was like, No, you're not.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there was, I remember my mom and Veta and my sister Becky making all sorts of paleo recreations or grain free recreations of different foods that we missed.”
2021-03-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT