Tacodeli salsas are now sold at HEB grocery stores.
Haz clic aquí para leer esto en español
Editor’s Note: Tacodeli, which has 12 locations in Texas, is a restaurant brand that sells its salsas, dips and tortillas in Whole Foods stores, and just announced that grocery chain HEB will also be selling the products. Jeff Day, president of Tacodeli’s retail business, shares the story of the company’s success in building retail salsa sales.
el Restaurante: Tacodeli has been selling products retail since 2017. Why did you start doing that?
Jeff Day: We’ve been in the restaurant business since 1999, and as we’ve expanded across Texas, the consumer affinity — and to some degree cult following — of many of our salsas continues to increase. In 2017, Whole Foods Market, which is headquartered here in Austin, approached Tacodeli and had a casual conversation about selling the salsas. Our founders, Roberto Espinosa and Eric Wilkerson said, “Heck yeah, that sounds great.” We launched in 2017 with three salsas at Whole Foods in the Southwest region, which was 47 stores.
eRM: Every Mexican restaurant has salsa, but not many sell it beyond the restaurant. Why were yours popular enough to sell in grocery stores?
Day: Roberto is originally from Mexico City...the salsas were primarily inspired by flavors of Mexico City in terms of both the ingredients used and the style of salsa.
One of our salsas, Salsa Doña, has a really fantastic origin story. In the early days of our first restaurant, Roberto held a salsa competition among the staff, and everyone contributed their own salsa recipe. One of the female chefs, Bertha Gonzalez, who had the nickname in the kitchen of Doña, presented the recipe for a creamy jalapeño salsa. It’s a beautiful bright green, emulsified, spicy jalapeño salsa that Roberto had never laid eyes on. That’s why it’s named Salsa Doña. And even though she’s long gone from Tacodeli, she’s still compensated for helping bring that salsa to the restaurant and now to consumers nationwide.
eRM: Did you have to change the salsas much to suit the retail market?
Day: No, we follow the same process that we use to make our salsa in our restaurants. We are roasting tomatoes on the plancha and roasting them down for our salsa roja, even at scale.
eRM: So, you’re not using a co-packer/food manufacturer?
Day: We are. We partnered with a smaller boutique co-packer here, and they follow the same procedures we do in the restaurants. In addition to Salsa Doña, we sell Salsa Roja and Salsa Verde in Whole Foods. And since 2017 we’ve added a queso, using the same recipe that’s in our restaurant. We’ve also added a black bean dip, which is the same one we use on our tacos. And with HEB, we launched what we call Chunky Salsa, the first product we have launched for consumer retail that is not in our restaurants. The reason for that is the salsas available in our restaurants are, for the most part, used as top- pings on a taco. And one thing that consumers were asking for is a more traditional tomato salsa that they can dip chips in.
Tacodeli recently began selling its brand of tortilla chips at Whole Foods.
We also we launched tortillas in about a hundred Whole Foods stores this past year, and we’re excited about the early success. We serve 6 million flour tortillas a year in our restaurants, and we have a great local Texas tortilla maker that follows a specific recipe just for us. Our tortillas are in the refrigerated section at Whole Foods because there are no preservatives in them.
What we think about our brand is, “We’ve Got Your Taco Night Covered.” We want customers in grocery stores to feel that they can elevate their taco night with Tacodeli.
eRM: Do you work with a broker or distributor to get your products into stores?
Day: We work with the sales brokerage firm Cultivate. They’ve done a really nice job so far. With HEB, we serve them direct, and with Whole Foods, we go through a distributor, UNFI, a big natural foods distributor.
Tacodeli products at Whole Foods
eRM: Do you sell any products to other restaurants or other foodservice clients?
Day: Not yet. We’re not saying no to that, but a lot of food- service operations want a fairly generic, cheap salsa. We sell a more premium product, so we haven’t found it to be necessarily a perfect fit. But we do think about partnering with certain restaurants, especially in Texas, where we have great brand equity. They would be able to say, “We serve Tacodeli’s queso on our menu, or we serve Tacodeli’s Salsa Doña.” We’ve had some initial conversations with some restaurant groups about that.
eRM: Do you see some benefit beyond the additional profit from the retail sales?
Day: We know the awareness of the restaurants helps drive sales of the retail goods, but we also know that as our retail sales have expanded in many places where we have more presence in the retail world than the restaurant world, the retail sales are creating a halo impact back to our restaurants.
eRM: What does the future hold for your retail sales?
Day: Currently we’re in about a hundred Whole Foods stores, and in June, we’ll be in 500 Whole Foods stores across the country. And now we are getting into HEB, which is a major Texas retailer. We hope to build off that and continue to partner with major retailers across the country.
eRM: If another restaurant came to you said, “We want to sell our salsas at retail, too,” do you have some advice?
Day: Number one, I would say know what you’re getting into. The recipe for success in the restaurant and hospitality world is incredibly different than the recipe for success in consumer product goods (CPG). Also be well capitalized in order to fund the inherent investment that’s required to grow a CPG brand.
You also have to be really honest with yourselves about what compromises you are willing to make to ensure your products can go to grocery stores nationwide and have a long shelf life and all of those things. You need to be able to keep your product quality as close to what has become special as you can. Sometimes the compromises might be so great that it’s no longer worth it, and sometimes you can do it really effectively.