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A local Cuban grocery store is opening new spots across Bexar County to meet the needs of the growing population.
Cuban Grocery Co. opened a store on Babcock Road last week. It’s the third San Antonio location to open in recent months.
Co-owners Jose Alejandro Madrigal and Alain Fernandez became friends through mutuals after they had both moved to Texas from Cienfuegos, Cuba, eight years ago. They worked in the semi-truck business for a couple of years before opening Cuban Grocery Co. with no entrepreneurial experience — Madrigal was previously an engineering professor in Cuba.
They said they developed an “instinct” to run the business, strongly motivated by the desire to access opportunities they didn’t have in their country.
Almost two years after their growing empire’s beginning, the stores are known for their unique hams, beverages and produce.
“We came up with it because of the need in the Cuban community. There were no products [around] that we had grown up with. We saw the need and went for it,” said Madrigal.
A variety of sazónes (seasonings), perfumes and popular Cuban desserts reel customers in.
Growing population creates new demand
Madrigal and Fernandez, who live currently in Austin and have family ties to San Antonio, opened their first store in Austin in May of 2022. Customers from San Antonio suggested they open a store closer to more local members of the Cuban community.
They took the advice and opened a second store on Blanco Road in December of 2022. They expanded business into Converse in September of 2023 with another store, and recently, a new restaurant.
At Q’Bolá — Cuban slang for “What’s up?” — a Cuban chef serves up fruity batidos de mamey, Cuban pizza and cafe con espumita (hand-whisked sugar and espresso that becomes crema).
The demand for Cuban products and cuisine comes from the growing population. Since 2021, the Cuban population is the fourth largest of Hispanic origin living in the U.S., tied with the Dominican Republic, and is concentrated in Texas, after Florida.
There has been an increase of roughly 78.3% of Cubans in Texas from 2000 to 2022, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
In Bexar County, 72% of foreign born residents are from Latin America.
Fernandez described giving the Cuban community access to food they otherwise couldn’t get, even in Cuba, as emotional.
Only someone who has lived in a country like Cuba, “and then gets to a country of freedom like this one” can understand it, he said.
The restaurant displays photographs of life in Cuba that tourists may not know: torn-down buildings, elderly vendors selling fruit on the street and human portraits.
Many people leaving Cuba have experienced food insecurity and still have family and friends back home sitting through hours of scheduled power blackouts with no access to ingredients like sugar or rice.
But when Cubans arrive in Texas, they find an abundance of plantains, boniato and malanga, and even delicacies like arroz con leche but “estilo Cubano,” and rollitos de guayaba, freshly made in Cuban bakeries in Florida.
“The situation in Cuba is very difficult,” Madrigal said.
“There’s nothing to eat. Mothers don’t have food to feed their children. [There is] hardly two to three hours of electricity. It’s very difficult. You have to live it to understand it,” Fernandez said.
Latin American brand nostalgia
Products on the shelves at Cuban Grocery Co. are brands you won’t find nearby. But they’re not exactly from Cuba.
Because of trade embargoes, the products actually come from companies who make “the same” products with similar formulas in Florida, Madrigal and Fernandez explained. They’re able to do it by buying the rights for the U.S. market, then selling it to vendors in different cities.
Cuban Grocery Co. brings in about six to eight pallets full of such goods each week to distribute at its three stores in San Antonio.
Witnessing customers’ nostalgia at products on the shelves is a reward, the co-owners said. It takes a team of 24 employees to make that happen.
On Monday, a woman in her 70s eagerly filled her rolling cart with a variety of products, excited at the familiar tastes.
It was Clara Martinez’s first time visiting the store near her home. She walked out with six bags of goodies, including El Latino yogurt, Malta India (a coke-like Cuban beverage) and a head of fresh culantro, a leaf known for making sofrito, a classic base seasoning for cooking in Cuba and in the Dominican Republic.
“There are so many things. Like this, I love this,” she said with a big smile, pointing at the malta.
The future for the Cuban Grocery Co. is to grow a franchise and have bigger markets to include groceries, hair products and home items, like domino tables and moka pots for Cuban espresso.
