About

…as a daily delivered, hot, foil-wrapped burrito. Breakfast flavors rocked from the start, and we were serving about 125 convenience stores and coffee shops along the Front Range. (For you Yankees and Southerners, that means a lot of miles up and down the Eastern side of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.) My mother Liz (former grade school principal, everything in order) even joined us to help keep track of customers, and she was really popular as “la abuelita.” The daily delivery, hot product, invoice reconciling, and so many miles and more customers and increasing gas prices took their toll. ¡Dios Mio! We had to use resources more wisely, and in 2008 we eliminated daily delivery and went to weekly deliveries. My own workweek was expanding exponentially as burrito sales grew, and remember, I have these three niños a casa.

In the production room, I only was allowed to label or box burritos. (Still true today.) We’ve always had a Mexican head chef. Though never verbalized in neither English nor Spanish, empleados thought the jefa (boss lady) was too despacio (slow) to do the real work of scooping fillings and rolling tortillas. It was unquestionable that I’d attempt to griddle eggs or make a batch of hot green chile. It’s best to leave that to the professionals.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about the literal translation of “Tres Picos,” which is “three peaks” like a mountaintop or “three beaks” like a bird. The spicy Mexican tomato and onion salsa is called “Pico de Gallo” which literally means “beak of the rooster.” You know how phrases and idioms morph over time: “pico” had come to mean “spicy” or “hot” in the Spanish language of Mexico. I wanted to modify our name to “Tres Picosos” for a more literal translation and personification of our logo: “Three Hotties.” Plus, I could obtain a trademark for that name.

On my way to the plant one morning, I was behind a cute bright blue pickup driven by a pretty Hispanic woman.

My decision was made, but in the spirit of democracy, I put it up for a vote, and the empleados backed “Tres Picosos.” We added a couple of letters to our logo in 2008, and here we are.

In 2009 Tres Picosos participated in Core-Mark’s annual Grab Heat ‘N Eat program and gained national distribution to all their warehouses. McLane Company also began more widespread distribution of Tres Picosos at the same time. My sombrero-wearing and musica-latina-playing at trade shows was paying off. Maverik stores out of Salt Lake City was a tremendous retail customer who really knows foodservice well. At “adventure’s first stop,” the corporate chef got Maverik’s bakery managers behind the hot foil-wrapped burrito program. Now they make their own burritos at store level! I applaud their achievements in foodservice even though it meant adios for Los Tres Picosos.

We continued to grow Tres Picosos by gaining distributor relationships, and in January 2011, we discontinued local deliveries altogether. Instead, we’d pack up and ship cases to distributors who could do the work of getting product to retailers a lot better than we could. We had outgrown our production abilities – my father-in-law was aging, and Shultz joined Quiznos full time to sell franchises to the non-traditional (convenience) marketplace. Thus I entered into my first relationship with a contract manufacturer, and I learned a lot. I’ve always been good with a euphemism.