V&V's founders Gilberto and Ignacio Villaseñor
Gilberto Villaseñor is the Chief Visionary Officer of V&V Supremo, a Chicago-based company known for its Hispanic cheeses, chorizo and other key products found in countless Mexican/Latin restaurants. Ed Avis, publisher of el Restaurante, asked him a few questions:
Avis: Your father Gilberto and uncle Ignacio started V&V Supremo in 1964. What are your first memories of the business?
Villaseñor: I worked during the summer at times in our second facility, which was in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. It was just a little a storefront, with a little awning on it. It had been a grocery store at one point. Like a lot of old buildings in Chicago, it had a basement that had been filled up with dirt when they raised the streets around the turn of the century. But they needed a basement for all the piping and stuff that you need to make cheese, so they physically removed all of the earth from the basement. I remember when they got their first vat. It was a rectangular sort of vat, with a steam jacket on it. Back then we didn’t have a milk intake area, so we reconstituted powdered milk to make the cheese. We did what we had to do! Then my dad found the facility that we still have today, about three blocks away. It was an old screw factory, I believe. That was in the late ‘70s. There I was involved in the initial start-up of the pasteurizer. That was a true cheese facility.
Avis: V&V is known for more than cheese – when did you introduce the other products?
Villaseñor: Well, actually we were also a wholesalers in the early years. Back then we would sell 100 lb bags of beans, rice, lard, oil, you name it. At one point, I think we were wholesaling even piñatas from Mexico. So ultimately, we just said, ‘No, you know what? We're going to have to focus our energy and our resources and our time.’ So, we did away with all of the wholesaling. We really focused our energies on doing what we do best and unique and that was our dairy products and our brand as such. So that's when we started to do the chorizo and the sour cream, and we looked for other products that we could do well. Slowly but surely, we started to fill gaps in the marketplace.
Avis: Speaking of sour cream, you mentioned that your Rancherito brand sour cream won “best in class” in the crème fraîche category in a contest in Wisconsin, even though you don’t market it as a crème fraîche . How did that happen?
Villaseñor: Yeah, even though we market it as a Mexican-style sour cream it literally won the category against the best crème fraîche purveyors out there! It won because we make it the old-fashioned way. Pretty much all sour creams are done today on a large industrial scale. It's fast, it's quick, it's cheap. We're not into fast, quick, cheap. We're into quality, consistency, flavor, texture, experience. When you experience our product, you open it, you break the set and literally, you're able to pour it out of the container beautifully, it’s very velvety. You don't dollop our sour cream…well, you could, if that's what you chose to do. But our product is designed truly as a Mexican style sour cream, which has a flowing, velvety body. It’s body should be more reminiscent of honey, per se, than it would be of an American style sour cream.
The second generation: Gilberto and Philip Villaseñor
Avis: You recently acquired Mill Creek Cheese in Arena Wisconsin. Why?
Villaseñor: We really need to expand our volume and our capacities to service our customers. Our current facility out of Browntown, Wisconsin, is running at pretty much at full capacity. With Mill Creek, a conversation just happened at an event. I think it was at a county fair and one of our senior cheese makers started talking to another cheese maker, and bottom line, that whole conversation evolved into what we needed and what was happening at Mill Creek. One thing led to another, and it made sense for them, it made sense for us, and we were able to make it happen.
Avis: Are there more acquisitions coming? Or new products in the pipeline?
Villaseñor: We are without question in a position and a posture to grow and to expand and we're looking to engage with other potential facilities that are maybe contemplating or thinking of retiring or moving on to other pastures and other endeavors. So definitely we would like to continue doing acquisitions, if at all possible. No question. Regarding products, definitely there are other new products that we are in the process of developing, but like I told you before, if we do, we want to make sure that it is the best that it can be within the marketplace. At the end of the day, our philosophy is always about, how do we make the best possible product that we can make, to delight our consumers, to delight our end user in such a way, that once they're hooked, they're hooked. They love the product, and they just can't live without it.