Mi Pueblo Food Center
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| private | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1991 |
| Founder | Juvenal Chavez |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California, U.S. |
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Number of locations
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15 |
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Area served
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Northern California |
| Products | Meat, produce, seafood, flowers, baked goods |
| Website | mipueblofoods.com |
Mi Pueblo is a Northern California neighborhood grocery based in San Jose, California. Mi Pueblo has a total of 15 store locations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Central Valley and Monterey Bay Peninsula. Mi Pueblo was established in 1991. It attempts to emulate the fresh-food markets of Mexico and Latin America while also carrying all the grocery items generally available in mainstream supermarkets.
Juvenal Chavez is founder and the Chairman of the Board of Mi Pueblo. Chavez emigrated from Mexico in 1984 and spoke no English at the time, taking odd jobs while attending night school to learn English. At one point he worked as a janitor at Stanford University. and in 1986, he went into business with his brother running Chavez Meat Market. In 1991, deciding to go off on his own, he purchased Country Time Meats in San Jose, California, starting his mercantile chain. Chavez opened his first business in the Bay Area because he found that the Hispanic population was very under-served and needed to purchase food easily without being impeded by their lack of knowledge in the English language. He started with the meat business because it was the most obvious opportunity. Over time he expanded into produce, bakery and deli, then grocery. Now Mi Pueblo is a $300 million business, with 19 stores opened and significant growth on the horizon.
In June 2014, Mi Pueblo announced its emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy after receiving $56 million in financing from Chicago- based investment firm Victory Park Capital (VPC). With this announcement came the appointment of Javier Ramirez as President and Chief Executive Officer of Mi Pueblo.
Ramirez was also joined by Martin Cortes as Chief Financial Officer and Jose Aguayo as Vice President of Human Resources to help stabilize the company from a financial and staffing standpoint.
Mi Pueblo has seven different departments in the store. The first department is the meat department, offering a wide variety of Latin American styled marinated meats, entrails, poultry and seafood - along with a full-service butcher staff. The next department is the produce department. The third department is the bakery, featuring items such as bolillos, tres leches cake and pan dulce. The Tortilleria, one of the most popular departments, prepares warm, fresh tortillas on a daily basis. The Hot Deli department offers a diverse selection of dishes from Mexico and Latin America. The seafood department offers a wide variety of fish, shrimp and freshly prepared dishes.
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Wikipedia