This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
If the unsteady economic recovery can have a silver lining, Salsitas Mendoza is it.
Born of necessity last year, the gourmet salsa business is emblematic of how good can come from hard times.
After just eight months, the Sandy company's line of seven salsa varieties can be found in a Park City ski resort, a Draper specialty food store, a Sandy restaurant and numerous other commercial businesses in the region, as well as its own store at 10600 S. 750 East.
Sales are exceeding expectations — so much so that Salsitas Mendoza is able to support owners Linnaea and Sergio Mendoza, four children and a grandson whom the couple brought into their home in December.
"When you both quit your jobs to pursue a dream, it's nerve-racking. You just don't know what is going to happen with it," Linnaea Mendoza said.
The Mendozas' journey from workers to proprietors began in 2009, when Sergio, a finish carpenter, was laid off. With homebuilding in free-fall and construction employment plunging, Sergio's chances of finding a job that didn't involve a pay cut were small. A year passed before he found work on a road crew that paid $8 an hour less.
Meanwhile, Linnaea was employed as a medical assistant by a large health-care provider. She enjoyed her job, but adjusting the household budget to live on her wages, Sergio's unemployment benefits and, later, the lower pay from his new job was hard.
It would be wrong to suggest that inspiration suddenly struck. Instead, the Mendozas simply "happened upon" the path that led them out of their fix, Linnaea said.
Sergio, a permanent resident of the U.S., had grown up in Mexico. He came to the United States in 1990 from Guadalajara, Mexico's second-biggest metropolis. Salsa was in his DNA. Linnaea, who would preserve salsas the couple made occasionally, was joking one day with her 13-year-old daughter, Marisela. Would the stuff sell? Could she sell enough to pay for her son's soccer fees and maybe a few other bills?
Let's find out, Marisela said. She took a jar next door. The neighbor bought it.
Flush with success, Linnaea signed up for the Taylorsville Dayzz carnival. Sales, she said, "were so wildly popular" that she started making the rounds of carnivals and farmers markets around the Salt Lake Valley. It seemed that the taste for the Mendozas' homemade salsas was unquenchable.
"It got to the point where neither Sergio nor I could do our full-time jobs," Linnaea said.
They plunged into the salsa business and never looked back. They hit trade shows and more farmers markets, got marketing help from the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food and hustled up several commercial clients. In the past six months, Linnaea said, Salsitas Mendoza earned as much as she earned in a year at her former job.
"I think it's popular because it's 100 percent homemade. It's not altered with any kind of oils or sugars or preservatives. We make it with the same recipes as my husband used in Mexico," Linnaea said.
Pirate O's, the specialty food store in Draper, has been selling the Mendozas' salsas for six months — albeit under the Pirate O label. Store owner Orian Collinsworth said he loves the salsas but isn't going to allow their label in his store. One day, Collinsworth believes, Mendoza-labeled spicy tomato sauces will be all over the valley, and that might dissuade people from coming to Pirate O's for its private-label tomato salsas.
"They produce a product that has a unique taste profile that we were looking for. We were looking for a 'gotcha' taste, something you don't get when you open up a can of paste or something like that," Collinsworth said.
"And like any retailer, we were looking for a quality supplier. The Mendozas fit the bill," he said.
Linnaea Mendoza said her company is growing fast enough to warrant building a bigger kitchen to cook up the salsas. Without help from outside financing, they are constructing a commercial kitchen inside the building they share with a professional barber.
"I just say there are a million salsas out there. Just taste ours, that's all I can ask. From there, people almost always come back to us," Linnaea said.
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