Meet Leticia
Leticia is a hardworking wife, mother, and restaurant owner who puts a piece of herself into every dish she serves. Hailing from Puebla, Mexico, Leticia has spent nearly twenty years growing her New Jersey restaurant hoping to extend to customers the same kind of warmth and kindness she felt in her home city.
“It’s so beautiful because every time I come into the restaurant, I feel like I’m stepping into my hometown. All of the food, music, and decorations represent the love I have for my family and community.”
In homage to her Puebla roots, Leticia’s restaurant specializes in cemitas, a regional sandwich offered by few other restaurants in her community. Her family’s recipe stays with tradition, using the freshest bread paired with avocado, mexican white cheese, onions, herbs and meat. As her most popular dish, Leticia believes the cemitas are what sets her business apart and fondly retells the story of her family’s initial idea to sell them.
“You’re not going to believe it. One day we were at the kitchen table making cemitas and talking about how there aren't any restaurants in the community selling them. My sister said we should give it a shot, and now it has been almost two decades.”
Before her family opened the restaurant, Leticia was a waitress at a local Irish pub for four years. It was her mother who first took the challenge of opening the restaurant over twenty years ago, employing Leticia as her right-hand woman in running operations. When Leticia’s mother sadly passed away, she became the owner of the restaurant with the goal to carry on her mother’s legacy. Today, she sees her own three children, ages 22, 20 and 10, as part of this legacy too.
Leticia’s success growing the business on her own inspired her to expand the restaurant into a second, neighboring storefront, thus freeing up space for more seating to accommodate her growing customer base. However, in doing so at the beginning of 2020, she could have never predicted the difficulties that would confront the restaurant industry with the onset of COVID-19.
“I had just begun renting a second storefront, so I had two rent bills, two electricity bills, and every other cost doubled. Because of the pandemic, no one was coming in, and I got worried because I had too many expenses and not enough revenue.”
Encouraged by a friend, Leticia joined Grameen America with the hopes of using her loans to keep up with the pressures of sustaining her restaurant on takeout and delivery orders alone. She had tried to gain access to capital before but was denied by traditional banks on the grounds that she lacked sufficient credit history to become a borrower. Two years and four loans later, Leticia is proud of her credit score and has a new outlook on her financial health, especially regarding the importance of saving for her future.
“My mentality around saving is totally different after joining Grameen America. You never know if the fridge is going to die or if the prep table is going to break, and those things have happened to me. I have a long-term vision now, and Grameen America is helping me achieve it.”
Leticia is currently saving up to purchase a liquor license acknowledging the influx of business it would bring to her restaurant. She has also been considering expanding into New York City with a second restaurant based on some preliminary market research. Leticia often receives delivery orders from the Bronx and Manhattan and hopes to bring her famous cemitas across the Hudson on a more permanent basis. “If it was up to me, I would bring cemitas to all fifty states,” she adds, laughing
Above all, Leticia is grateful for the hand up Grameen America offered her business and her family. She recognizes the pivotal role peer support has played in her entrepreneurial journey and hopes others come to that realization as well.
