With A Journalism Degree From Florida And A Career In Water Sports, How In The World Did I become La Presidenta Of Tres Picosos
I was a transplant to Colorado, where my husband, Shultz, and my father-in-law, Gus, had been running a food manufacturing facility for years. They were making seafood salads, sushi, green salads, rice bowls, and other niche foods for a variety of customers. Shultz also ran Brand Management, a brokerage and consulting company to the convenience industry, and had many friends and colleagues in the business. With three small children at home, I only came in periodically to help with creative marketing and PR. Then Shultz’s biggest client internalized its sales team in 2004, so he took a full-time position with them. I stepped up and added a bit of bookkeeping, HR, and operations management to my resume.
One of our favorite retailers visited us one day with a foil-wrapped, barely labeled burrito. He loved the flavors and the authenticity, but the food producer didn’t operate a USDA-inspected plant. That means the company was severely limited in the amount of meat it could include products. (I’m still fanatical about producers who break this USDA rule.) He wasn’t willing to risk his customers’ foodservice safety, and he asked if we could make an authentic homestyle Mexican burrito at our plant.