How I Built This Podcast with Siete Foods - Sietefoods.com

How We Built This

Sharing intimate (and sometimes embarrassing) stories about family, business, and food.

how we built this

Sharing intimate (and sometimes embarrassing) stories about family, business, and food.

Our Co-founders, Vero & Miguel, recently sat down (aka hopped on Zoom from their living rooms!) with our friend, Guy Raz, to tell him the story of Siete on the latest episode of the How I Built This podcast. Their conversation has us feeling nostalgic and grateful for the journey that led us to where we are today.

Before Siete, there was just the seven of us Garzas in Laredo, Texas. Our road to Siete began with family—our grandparents, our mom and dad, and our brothers and sisters.

If you’ve ever read our packaging, you may know the following part of our story well:

When our sister, Vero, was diagnosed with several health conditions, our family of seven (siete) came together to support her by adopting a grain free diet—yes, all of us! Even with each other's support, it wasn’t easy. Giving up grains also meant giving up some of our favorite foods, like flour tortillas. It felt as if we were turning our back on our heritage. Like the problem-solver she is, Vero started experimenting in the kitchen, using alternative ingredients like almond flour to make a grain free tortilla. Our family knew that we had something special we wanted to share.

And yet, there’s so much more to our story that simply cannot fit on a bag of Grain Free Tortilla Chips.

We’re excited to share these untold stories (including some of the embarrassing ones we typically reserve for sharing around the dinner table) with you. It means the world to us to honor and give thanks to our familia, our community, where we’ve been, and where we’re going.

Family values

Our Co-founders, Vero & Miguel, recently sat down (aka hopped on Zoom from their living rooms!) with our friend, Guy Raz, to tell him the story of Siete. Their conversation has us feeling nostalgic and grateful for the journey that led us to where we are today.

Miguel & Veronica Hugging It Out

Miguel & Veronica Hugging It Out. Our mom, Aida, used to make us sit on the couch and hug each other until we stopped fighting. It worked every time!

Decorating for the Holidays.

Decorating for the Holidays. Some of our favorite memories as a family were the days where we’d all decorate the Christmas tree together with the sounds of Eydie Gormé and the smells of coffee and buñuelos.

Aida & Vero.

Aida & Vero. Our mom, Aida, and sister, Veronica (Vero). They also share the title of Co-Founder now!

Cheerleading Days.

Cheerleading Days.Before her diagnosis, Vero enjoyed cheerleading with our younger sister, Becky, at our high school in Laredo.

What Starts Here Changes the World! All seven of us attended the University of Texas at some point. Our mom & dad met and fell in love on the campus of UT Austin!

Our Health Journey Begins.

Our Health Journey Begins. With our brother Rob’s encouragement, we started exercising together in our backyard at our family’s home in Laredo. But, Aida & Vero would workout inside the house, nervous to try Rob’s new workouts.

Our Health Journey

Our Health Journey.Aida & Vero worked up the courage to workout with the rest of the group! That same summer, Vero decides to adopt a low-inflammation, grain free diet, and the whole family joins her for the journey.

Solving A Problem. After eliminating grains from her diet, Vero felt like she was turning her back on her heritage by not being able to eat foods like tortillas. Like she always does, she started problem solving and began the first of many iterations of an almond flour tortilla.

Heritage Inspired

Heritage Inspired.Vero grew up making tortillas with our Grandma Campos, but we never knew we’d be making tortillas ourselves. She is pictured here making them with her great granddaughter, Rebecca.

Our First Family Business: G7.

Our First Family Business: G7.  After we started working out in our backyard, friends and family began joining us as well. Eventually, we outgrew the yard and decided we should open our own gym in Laredo where we could invite even more into our family workouts.

G7 Memories.Our sister, Linda, rocking a rowing workout at G7. While helping run the gym and teaching at the local university, Vero was also selling her delicious almond flour tortillas to clients at the gym and others around town.  

Abuela Approved. When Grandma Campos tried Vero’s almond flour tortillas for the first time, she said “These are good! These are better than mine!” Once she had her grandma’s stamp of approval, Vero knew she had something special.

Boldness with Humility. For years, Vero had wondered how to scale the production of her tortillas. Our brother Miguel, the baby of the family, convinced her to see if they could find just one customer—together.

We Must’ve Been Nutty.  Wheatsville Co-op, a local grocery store in Austin, accepted our almond flour tortillas on the spot! We got right to work finding a commercial kitchen to produce more tortillas and coming up with a name: Must B Nutty.

Sharing Our Foods

Sharing Our Foods.In 2015, Whole Foods called and we answered! We expanded our distribution of our Grain Free Almond Flour Tortillas and a year later, we launched a second product, Grain Free Cassava Flour Tortillas under our new name: Siete Family Foods.

New Family Traditions

New Family Traditions.Our family trekked to California for our first Natural Product Expo West. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were starting a new family tradition.

Siete Spotting

Siete Spotting.It never gets old seeing our products on shelves! It still brings our mom, Aida, to tears.

Family First

Family First, Family Second, Business Third.As our product lines grew, so did our Siete family. We will always cherish the memories we made at our first headquarters in Austin—especially the many games of “Foam Roller Baseball.” Think baseball, but with a foam roller. Truly revolutionary!

Friday Lunch.If you were to survey our family about what their favorite part about working at Siete is, we bet they’d say “Friday lunch!” Each week, we gather together to celebrate our week and enjoy delicious foods made by Chefs Andrés, Scarleth & Dan.

Gathering Together.They say the dining table is the heart of the home—and, for us, the act of gathering around the table with others is the heart of who we are as a family. We believe that just about everything in life is better accomplished and enjoyed together, in community.

 Juntos Es Mejor. Today, seven years since our founding, we have grown to over 90 members of the Siete Family and more than 40 products in the Siete Foods Family. Siete started with food, but today it’s about so much more.

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