We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Enrique Trevino. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Enrique below.

Hi Enrique, thanks for joining us today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

Let me start by saying that it’s great being invited back to share updates about my story and that of my company! I hope that I can share things of value with whoever reads this and inspire people who are persevering through the ups and downs of starting a new business.

By far the most unexpected and challenging problem that Thoughtful Snacks LLC has faced to date started fairly recently. About a month ago, we were forced to shut down our production and sale of Coco Chops by the Texas DSHS due to that agency issuing us the wrong license more than two years ago. In order to resume the production and sale of Coco Chops, we now have to establish our own commercial kitchen as well as have it approved by the Texas DSHS. It was very frustrating when this happened, especially since we believed we were issued the correct food manufacturing license in 2021, and because the only reason Coco Chops are subject to these harsh regulations is because the pork rinds we use to make them are considered to be a meat product.

Despite these recent struggles, perhaps because of them, we have been taking action and innovating in ways that we haven’t done since my family and I started Thoughtful Snacks in September of 2020. In taking action to bring back Coco Chops as soon as possible, we have started clearing out an old storage with the goal of revamping it and turning it into our commercial kitchen. This hasn’t been the easiest task considering that the summer heat limits the time we can work on it, but we’re confident that we’ll have it cleared out very soon and begin working on making it into an outstanding kitchen. In terms of innovation, we have taken this temporary setback as an opportunity to expand our product line beyond Coco Chops, something we’ve wanted to do for a while but haven’t acted upon until now. The two new snacks we’ve launched so far are chocolate covered banana chips and chocolate covered gummy bears, which have already been a hit at the local farmers markets we attend.

We plan on producing and selling even more delicious snacks soon, as well as continuing all our new products after we bring Coco Chops back.

Enrique, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Enrique Trevino and my parents and I run our small business: Thoughtful Snacks LLC. Our signature product is Coco Chops: air-fried chocolate covered pork rinds in five delicious flavors, but we’ve recently expanded our product line to include chocolate covered banana chips and chocolate covered gummy bears. We also plan on releasing more delicious snacks as well!

The idea for Thoughtful Snacks started simultaneously with the idea of Coco Chops, our signature product. I have always loved pork rinds, or “chicharrones” as we call them at home, and I’ve always loved chocolate too. I had a random thought one day in 2019 that the two would be amazing together, and then about a year and a half later, my parents and I finally started experimenting with covering pork rinds with chocolate and seeing how they tasted. To our pleasant surprise, they turned out to be delicious! Shortly after that, we began selling Coco Chops at local San Antonio area farmers markets, festivals, events, and stores. Two and a half years later, we’re still selling in our community and we’ve recently introduced some new delicious snacks as well!

I believe our novel snack ideas, especially Coco Chops, sets us apart and is a big reason why folks in our community and beyond like what we sell and continue to come back and support our small business. Apart from this, we make a point to establish a positive presence in our community, with friendly and attentive customer service being at the heart of that. I am also incredibly proud of the uniqueness of our snacks and how they are always surprising people at the venues we sell at.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I believe that our presence at several San Antonio area farmers markets has really helped us build our reputation in and beyond our community. People in our community love to come out to farmers markets and festivals big and small to support small businesses, and we embrace this support by treating every customer right and establishing friendly relations with everyone we encounter. This has built our reputation beyond San Antonio as well because many of the customers we’ve served at these markets have been from other parts of Texas and even from out of state, leading to many online orders from across the country. As we introduce our new line of snacks during the absence of Coco Chops, this reputation with our customers helps us continue to succeed because they still come out and support us wherever we are.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I believe that the best way to build an audience on social media is to actually go out in the community, do business, and connect with your customers. Having handed out thousands of business cards since we started our business, I can definitely say that making connections in the real world with your customers translates to having them become your audience on social media. This is especially important for me since I’ve never been active on social media, and for the longest time I was actually hesitant to even post things on our business Instagram account. I’ve discovered that making the most out of that free resource leads to people following you, discovering you, and paying attention to what you post so that they know when and where they can come out to support your business.

So simply put, I’ve really just built my business’s social media audience by meeting people in person and, recently, being much more active on Instagram and Facebook. I believe that our customers appreciate it when we post updates on our story and also the venues we attend ahead of time. This gives them the chance to make plans to come out to those venues and it certainly benefits us in the way that we are able to connect with returning customers as well as serve new customers. In addition to this, we will also be announcing when we bring Coco Chops back, so this has led many of our customers to pay attention to our social media accounts so they know when they can get this beloved snack again.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thoughtfulsnacksstore.com
• Instagram: @thoughtfulsnacks
• Facebook: Thoughtful Snacks

Image Credits
Thoughtful Snacks LLC