Food Entrepreneur - October 25, 2022 - 7

The Garza family, from left: Miguel, chief executive officer; Becky, director of customer delight; Linda, general counsel; Bobby, legal; Aida, purchasing;
Veronica, president and chief innovation officer; and Roberto, IT director.
innovation officer, and she leads a team
that includes our senior director of
culinary and innovation, who is actually
my best friend and freshman college
roommate. When we're evaluating
where we want to go from an innovation
For us, does it fit those guardrails,
and is it heritage-inspired? And are we
bringing some level of innovation to the
shelf?
If I were to talk to our culinary
team, it's almost as if the restrictions
what categories we think Siete should be
serving the consumer.
Can you share recent examples
of how you have executed on this
approach?
Mr. Garza: We launched a line of
'We're always looking for ways where we can
take some of these recipes that my sister
and my mom and the team are making in
their kitchens and bring them to life to share
with the consumer.'
- Miguel Garza, Siete Family Foods
standpoint, we really look at it from this
framework that we are a better-for-you
Mexican-American food brand, and we
still want to bring products to market that
we may miss that we're no longer able to
eat or purchase, or that we feel there's an
opportunity to bring more nutrient-dense
or better ingredients to product offerings.
October 25, 2022
around what you can or can't use, that
resource constraint, actually breeds
more innovation. I don't think that we
haven't pursued innovation because of
some of the challenges that the industry
is facing. I think that we continue to be
deliberate and methodical around where
we want Siete to show up and where and
beans recently. We launched refried
black and refried pinto. They are both
made with avocado oil. They're both
made with organic beans. More recently,
we launched charro beans and ranchero
beans. The charro bean is vegan, which
is interesting because traditionally
the charro bean, at least as we grew up
eating them, has some sort of smoked or
cured meat as a part of it, like sausage
or bacon.
For us, it was, how can we present
an offering that meets on the flavor profile
and meets on the ingredient profile
that people may be looking for and hits
on the authenticity that we want to bring
to market? And when I say " authenticity "
I mean specific to me and my family and
the foods we grew up eating.
And so, when I look at that line
of beans, yeah, we're bringing organic
beans with cleaner ingredient profiles,
so everything you can pronounce on
Food Business News
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Food Entrepreneur - October 25, 2022

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