We recently connected with Sandy Wall and have shared our conversation below.
Sandy, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Growing up between visiting my family in Colima, Mexico, hearing stories about my mom’s childhood, and the food I grew up eating. Their was always a key item in most stories and meals that never stood out to me until 2020, tortillas! During the pandemic, it felt like bread makers were popping up left and right. Whether it was someone experimenting with a Tik Tok recipe or local farmer utilizing their ingredients, it seemed like everyone was making a loaf. As I was on a typical mid-afternoon pandemic neighborhood walk for the third time that day, it made me think about a few things. 1. What was something that I could make from scratch that would feel new and different that I could share with others? and 2. I began to think about how tortillerias weren’t very common in Long Beach, California where I live.
In Mexico, tortillerias are like the American equivalence to a hipster coffee shop at every corner. You have your regulars, your first timers, all ages buying their coffee. That is how it is in Mexico, you pick up your fresh tortillas from the local vendor around the corner freshly made every day. You enjoy it with a warm caldo (soup), huevos rancheros, or maybe even just warmed up by itself. This is part of what made PUEBLITA come to life.
During 2020, as we all know, a lot of change was happening, for the better or worst. One thing I knew is that I didn’t want to sit back and do nothing. At this time, I was beginning to work more with the houseless community and I knew I wanted to give back and do more for my community. Unfortunately, I am not the daughter of Jeff Bezos or next in line for the royal seat, so financially, thinking about how to give more money and do more work sustainably for myself was a big thing on my mind as well. I thought through different ways to fundraise and generate funds in order to continue hosting events and making a change and that is when everything came together.
PUEBLITA came to life as a way for myself to integrate my culture, my love for food, and my efforts to contribute to my community all in one. Whenever you purchase any merchandise or tortillas from our online website, majority of the proceeds go towards all of our community events hosted by us. You are able to purchase our tortillas Monday through Saturday freshly made similar to the tortillerias in Mexico brought to you in Long Beach, California.
Who would’ve ever thought that tortillas would generate so much light and community. This entire brand has been inspired through my Mexican American lens. It represents the love my family always had around food and the idea of helping one another in times of need. Food is the gateway to conversations, even the not so easy ones. Every time you bite into one of our tortillas, your creating change. We have been around since 2021 and what an amazing journey it has been. It has allowed me to meet some smart, caring, and admirable people and a company that makes me very proud to be apart of.
Sandy, 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?
I was born and raised from San Bernardino, California. I am a first generation from my mom who is originally from Colima, Mexico. Pueblita is inspired from my upbringings, my abuelos, my brother, and my mom. I’m very proud of my Mexican culture and it is a big part of my identity, so much that I revolved a whole non-profit around tortillas!
Food has always been a super big part of my life. Thankfully I come from a family of amazing cooks, both men and women! I was super blessed to have a mom and brother who made fresh meals every single day for not only me but for my friends, our other family, and neighbors! Whether I realized it or not when I was younger, my family was building a community around food which years later would build the foundation of what PUEBLITA is about.
PUEBLITA is a non-profit located in Long Beach, California, where I now live. I sell freshly made corn tortillas Monday through Saturday through pop-ups and online sales. We use the majority of the proceeds to organize our free community events or donate to local non-profits in the greater Los Angeles area. I founded PUEBLITA in 2021 and since then, we’ve been able to host four back to school drives, three toy drives, AAPI event, beach cleanups, park cleanups, donations drives, distribute care packages, host career focused panels for high schools, distribute summer outdoor event, host small business fairs, and so much more! This has all been done through tortillas!
I never would’ve thought that such a staple item for Mexican cuisine would make such a huge impact and have such a great fan base! However, here we are, going into almost three years later and I’ve been able to accomplish so much through the power of corn tortillas. Their are times, when people come up to me and let me know how much joy and happiness they have to see our tortillas and see how much impact it has given to the community. It really makes me feel good to know that what my mom and family was able to make me feel through their warm meals and an open door policy in our home with food when I was little, that others get to truly experience that too. At PUEBLITA, everyone is apart of the family and we accept everyone with open arms.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Social media is truly the way we were able to build an audience. In the beginning, I knew I had a very specific branding in mind and I wanted that to reflect on our social pages. I wanted PUEBLITA to not just feel like an every day non-profit, but something that felt modern and more zillennial (a mix of gen-z and millenial, yes don’t laugh that is what I am).
What worked out for us was consistently sticking to our branding in our posts (specific fonts, color schemes) and posting at least three times a week. This was a mixture of graphics and photos of our corn tortillas. The idea was to keep a cool, modern, social media grid that made you look twice before skipping to the next page. If you look at our Instagram grid right now, at first glance, you’re not sure if we’re a company selling merchandise, a graphics page, or a tortilla business. As you grow more and more curious, you begin to realize, WE ARE ALL OF IT!
Lastly, I stuck doing a lot of the trends that Instagram was recommending to stay releveant in the algorithim- hashtags, reels, and consistency. Instagram and Facebook were are main ways of communicating with our audiences and has helped us get to where we are today!
We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.
As of right now, we sell our tortillas through pop-ups and ecommerce at PUEBLITA.ORG. I use SquareSpace and it has been the platform I’ve been using since the beginning. The main reason being because it has a lot of flexibility for me to allow my customers to select specific times and dates to pick up their tortillas. It is also super user-friendly, at least in my opinion. Last but not least, it is affordable, even for the basic model which is a win win in my book!
Contact Info:
- Website: pueblita.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pueblitatortillas/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pueblitatortillas
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-wall-29b0a1bb/