We recently connected with Belen De la CruZ and have shared our conversation below.

Belen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright – so having the idea is one thing, but going from idea to execution is where countless people drop the ball. Can you talk to us about your journey from idea to execution?

Once moved to Atlanta I felt the need of opening my own business. And I had 2 different options to explore one related with food and the other one with design. I didn’t know which one would give me the opportunity. I was cooking at home a lot by that time for my kids and friends and always recieved lots of compliments about it!

One day a friend asked me to give her a cooking class, I really thought it was a crazy idea as I am not a chef… she insisted and I finally did it. It felt so good, like I did it all my life.. I could do it again, but how?
Something came to my mind. I am not a chef but there is a dish that I know how to cook more than locals… EMPANADAS and if I add Wine , it could never go wrong!
I designed a flyer. – “empanada wine night” and sent it to my friends, neighbors, school moms… and suddenly I started having lots of reservations for big groups, small groups and privates!

After a few months I realized everyone loved the empanadas and were asking where they could buy them… there was NO Argentinian store in Atlanta.
I mentioned this to my brother and he immediately brought the idea of opening a store and I said No right away. He insisted and really Inhave no idea how a few months after I found a space available a few minutes away from home and rent it… OMG!!!! And now???
I had no idea how to proceed. So I looked for help, read a lot, asked many questions. Hired an arquitect to design the kitchen, and visit the county offices many times to understand my next steps. We built it in 8 months and finally opened our doors on February 2020

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Once we rented the space to built our kitchen we needed to decide on the name for our store. by that time I already had so many cooking classes and my customers knew me and my pastries under my name and I even had a logo that I was using. So I really thought the right thing was to continue with that. We just redesigned the logo. We knew the word “Empanadas” should definitely be part of it. We knew that empanadas was such a HOOK that even on the outside we did a sign bigger just to make sure people would read that more than our logo! Belen de la cruz could not mean something… but empanadas? Everybody knows about empanadas! We opened our first location on February 2020 with a menu of an assortment of empanadas from beef to cheesybeef , chicken and vegetarians and pastries with dulce de leche. A few months after we added 4 different flavors. Having a totalmof 13 flavors. And added custom cakes too. Charcuterie boards and cheesebreads are part of our menu too. We currently have 3 locations and we are wholesale for bars, coffeshops and restaurants!

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think Atlanta is a city that doesn’t move like other cities ..marketing related. a marketing campaign in Buenos Aires relies on hundred thousand followers on instagram. Influencers have millions of followers. Here in Atlanta a strong influencer has may be 40k. Instagram is not as strong as other cities… but Oh boy .. you want new customers? Try having someone talking about you at NEXT DOOR.. we had 4/5 /20 of new customers per day just for being mentioned at next door. Atlanta has the little town mouth to mouth behavior.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

After the mouth to mouth the only thing that will keep you rolling is consistency. Quality on our products and consistency on our flavors is the key to keep on growing

Contact Info:

• Website: https://belendelacruz.com
• Instagram: Belendelacruz_empanadas
• Facebook: Belen de la Cruz