Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Gerardo Tiburcio Calles. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Gerardo thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

When people ask me how I became an entrepreneur, I always say it started long before my first official business. It started in the living room, the kitchen, and long car rides with my dad.

Since I can remember, my dad talked business—not just in the abstract, but with this constant curiosity: What can we make better? How do we work smarter, not harder? It wasn’t just idle talk either. My sister and I were always included. He listened to us like we were boardroom partners, not just kids. And most importantly, he believed in us.

When I was 13, my sister and I came up with the idea to build arcade games and place them in local mom-and-pop shops. We figured we’d split the earnings 50/50 with the store owners. The idea felt exciting—but also huge. Still, we pitched it to our dad like any startup would pitch an investor. He didn’t laugh. He nodded, thought about it, and backed us—financially and emotionally.

I still remember finding a broken, moldy arcade machine tossed on the side of the road. I dragged it home, determined to fix it. My dad bought me a TV and a Nintendo console. I wired it all together, painted the box, and—somehow—it worked. We placed it in the neighborhood store and soon, I was making real money.

My dad gave us more funds to expand—three more TVs, three more consoles, and materials to build new cabinets. My sister took charge of client relations, scouting new locations and handling collections. We were just kids, but we were running a business.

That experience taught me more than any MBA program ever could. I learned how to prototype, pitch, build, sell, and—most importantly—trust my instincts. Today, I run a growing popsicle factory with a team I believe in as my dad believed in us. Our products are in markets across the region, but that same spirit of curiosity and scrappy innovation lives in everything we do.

What did my parents do right? They made us feel capable. They trusted our ideas. And they gave us room to fail, try again, and keep building. That belief was the first investment in my journey—and the returns have been lifelong.

Gerardo, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

“Paletas, Family, and the Taste of Home”

My name is Gerardo Tiburcio, and I’m the founder of Frumex Factory, a family-run business rooted in love, memory, and the belief that food—especially the right flavor—can take you home.

Frumex started as the dream of two siblings, far from our native Mexico but deeply connected to the flavors we grew up with. We didn’t want just any business—we wanted something that would evoke home. In 2004, we opened a small paletería in Salisbury, Maryland, where we crafted frozen fruit bars—Paletas—using real fruit and traditional recipes. Little by little, word spread. Customers began driving from hours away just to relive the familiar taste of mango con chile or creamy coconut—flavors that spoke of family, summer afternoons, and our childhood.

But Frumex isn’t just a business story—it’s also a love story.

As Frumex gained popularity, I was falling in love with the woman who would become my wife. When she was accepted to college, we made a bold decision to expand the business closer to her campus. We opened our factory in Baltimore, and that move changed everything. We scaled from producing 200 paletas a day to 10,000. Love inspired that leap—and it continues to power everything we do.

Today, what started as a small sibling project is now a full family legacy. My wife is my greatest partner. Our children—ages 2, 4, and 7—have grown up in the world of Frumex. They test new flavors, help at festivals, and are the best brand ambassadors with their friends and classmates. And just like my dad once invested in my childhood business ideas, we invest in theirs—no matter how small. At Frumex, everyone has a seat at the table.

What sets us apart? Our popsicles are made with intention. We use the best ingredients because we imagine our own kids eating them. Every paleta is rooted in authentic Mexican recipes passed down and preserved with care. No shortcuts. Just real fruit, real cream, and a lot of love.

We’re now proud to be in over 200 points of sale across five states, but our heart is still the same: a family sharing the flavors of home with others who miss it too.

More than a product, Frumex is a feeling. A memory. A moment of connection. That’s what we offer—and that’s what we’re most proud of.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

Yes, we proudly manufacture every one of our products at Frumex Factory—and let me tell you, it has been a journey filled with creativity, problem-solving, and more than a few sleepless nights.

When we got started, we knew what we wanted to create: authentic, artisan-style Mexican fruit popsicles—paletas—made with real ingredients and no shortcuts. But knowing what we wanted and knowing how to manufacture it at scale were two very different things.

Paleta-making in Mexico is often done with a machine that freezes molds using a glycol-based cooling system. These machines are common in hot regions of Mexico where street vendors make their own paletas, but we quickly learned that in the U.S., no vendor offered machines suitable for a small startup like ours—only massive, commercial-scale equipment with price tags far beyond our reach.

So we turned to Mexico, and after a lot of searching, we found a small family business that hand-built the type of paleta machines used by traditional vendors. Importing it was a project in itself. We had to handle customs, paperwork, and, once it arrived, an even bigger challenge: getting approval from Milk Control, the regulatory agency overseeing our production.

Because our machine was artisan-made, we had to walk Milk Control through every detail—how it worked, how we would clean it, how we would maintain it. It was a crash course for all of us, but we got it approved.

Next came the molds. We imported traditional popsicle molds from Mexico, only to find out they didn’t meet U.S. standards and couldn’t be used. We had no choice but to discard them and invest in new molds that complied with regulations. We found suitable ones in Brazil and brought those in—another logistical puzzle, but a necessary one.

Because machinery is one of the most expensive parts of any manufacturing business, we started lean. Every popsicle was handmade: we manually placed sticks in the molds at just the right moment during freezing—a timing game we became experts at. Too early, and the stick would freeze crooked. Too late, and it wouldn’t go in at all. We hand-wrapped each popsicle, sealed the bag, and placed each sticker by hand. We didn’t sleep much, but we made it work.

Time was our biggest cost. As any startup founder knows, the idea of “working hours” doesn’t exist. If something needed to get done, it didn’t matter if it was midnight. My sister, my wife and I did it, because we believed in the dream.

We didn’t go to school for manufacturing. We learned by calling family and friends back in Mexico—many of them street vendors making paletas in their own neighborhoods. We got recipes from them and slowly adapted our production to reflect a factory-level operation without losing the soul of the product.

As sales grew, we reinvested in more machines, expanding production and refining our process. But I’ll be honest, manufacturing your own product comes with heavy trade-offs. I know I can save money by not outsourcing, but when a machine breaks—and it always seems to break at the worst time—I can’t just call a technician. That can cost a fortune. So I’ve become the technician. Over the years, I’ve learned to fix almost every machine in our factory, but it’s still one of the most stressful parts of the job.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is this: when you manufacture your own product, you don’t just build something—you become something. You become an engineer, a food scientist, a negotiator, a mechanic, and a problem-solver. And every paleta we send out reflects that dedication.

We don’t just make popsicles. We make something our kids eat, something our community connects with, and something we’re proud to put our name on. And for that, every challenge has been worth it.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Funding Frumex wasn’t the result of a lucky investor, a big loan, or a winning pitch. It was built the old-fashioned way—through sweat, sacrifice, and stubborn faith in our dream.

When my sister and I decided to start the business, we had a clear plan: I would continue working as a construction contractor to provide steady cash flow, and she would dedicate herself full-time to launching and growing the paletería. She had saved everything she could from her job as a restaurant cook, and I chipped in every extra dollar I made on construction jobs.

For the first three years, we barely made ends meet. We didn’t hire anyone. We lived far below our means. I was the handyman for everything—building countertops, fixing freezers, rewiring plugs, patching walls—whatever needed to be done, I did it. Every penny we made went back into the business, and every hour we had went into making sure it stayed afloat.

It wasn’t glamorous, and it certainly wasn’t easy. But it was ours.

Then in 2007, the recession hit—and my construction business dissolved almost overnight. At the time, it felt like a major loss. But looking back, it was the turning point.

Suddenly, I had nothing holding me back from going all in. My sister and I were now both fully committed, and having two heads focused on the business 24/7 changed everything. We started to think more strategically: How could we wholesale? How could we produce more in less time? How could we find stores to carry our product? With one of us at the factory and the other out building relationships, we finally had the bandwidth to grow.

It reminded us of when we were kids, dreaming up business ideas, taking them seriously, and dividing responsibilities to make them happen.

Frumex was built not just with capital—but with hustle, resourcefulness, and trust. We didn’t raise funds; we raised each other, and gave everything we had to see our vision come to life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.frumexfactory.com
• Instagram: frumexfactory
• Facebook: @frumexfactory
• Youtube: @frumexfactory