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

Jose, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

As my wife, Shani, & I were beginning to explore Oregon’s craft beverage movement, my son said Cider is where it’s at. He was right, we fell in love with Cider. then shortly after my wife said, “too bad there aren’t any with the flavors we grew up with”. I agreed and we went online searching for some to buy, even if we had to pay to ship them. We could not find any across the country and we were a little shocked, the flavors we were looking for are loved globaaly. That is when I turned to her and said, “why don’t we just do it?” She agreed, I then approached my son JJ and daughter Jazz and asked if they were willing to be a part of this new venture and let them know without them, we would not be able to do it. Luckily, they were both on board! Next step was to reach out to my mother, Lourdes, and I asked her to prepare some of her Aguas Frescas for us. She did, and then came the test. Would these flavors blend with an apple base? We weren’t sure but we blended them with a can of hard apple cider and once we tasted it … we knew we were on to something. The name came easy, and it is not just about our family we wanted people to think about their own families as they enjoy our Ciders. Our logo is based on the Angel de Independencia in Mexico City, that is where my parents were born and that stature always stood out to me when we visited family in Mexico.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Our background is in the hospitality business, restaurants, sports bars, etc. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, we also saw the gap between what was available and what was not with regards to the products/services from the Latino culture. This new business though, added another layer of complexity for us since we had never owned a business where we would personally not be in front of the customer. Our Ciders would have to sell themselves at the store shelves, restaurant menus and taproom lists. So, we had to make sure we put as much effort into the packaging than anything else. Even though our goal is to be Modelo of the Hard Cider world, we knew we had to be careful as we grew this business. The temptation is there to raise funds and scale but we knew it would take time for businesses to first carry our Ciders and then for people to find them. We are now in our 7th year and looking forward to a great 2025.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

We have two of Taprooms and we knew we had to offer more than just our Ciders. One idea my wife had was to create Cider Cocktails, it gave our customers who weren’t big Cider drinkers an easy way to try them, but it also helped us sell more Cider. From 2022 to 2023 these drinks grew from 13% of our sales to 18%. So almost one in five of the drinks we sell is a Cider cocktail! They are primarily Cideritas, Cidermosas, Cidertinis, etc. Shani and Jazz also create drinks for special occasions and there was one drink that sold more than anything we’ve ever offered. The movie Barbie was about to premier and they created the Barbie, it was drink flavored with craft Cider, prickly pear and it was pink. We sold dozens of these drinks every day and ran out of the ingredients, and people were still asking for it weeks after. So we always find ways to connect our offerings with what’s happening in the world.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

COVID. Three different ways it affected us. We opened our first taproom June of 2020, so as the world was closing down, we were opening. I don’t like thinking of those days, but we made it through. Luckily, we went into it knowing the key would be to keep costs down at a minimum, but that was a very tough time. I felt worst for the staff because they needed to find jobs elsewhere due to the limited hours we could give them. On the distribution side, our Ciders were in bottles and because of Covid that bottler ran out and left us with no Cider to sell to businesses. Luckily, we were beginning to transition to cans and instead of doing it over several months we had to do it overnight. That saved us, but one area that to this day has not come bask are the amount of kegs we sell. Before Covid, 60% of what we sold was kegs and that went to almost zero and now is about 35%. So we still have some catching up to do.

Contact Info:

• Website: www. lafamiliacider.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lafamiliacider
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lafamiliacider