By Joe Hyde
Publisher
June 30, 2007

Julio’s Corn Chips are legend in these parts. The signature yellow bags of corn chips can be found on shelves of every HEB Grocery Store and Wal-Mart Super Center in San Antonio, San Angelo, and even Houston and Dallas. This now-thriving, but small food manufacturing company has humble beginnings, having grown to a rather large food manufacturing enterprise with little more than the word of mouth of hundreds of thousands of loyal customers.

These chips are seasoned with a Tex-Mex mix of garlic, paprika, cumin and lime that is robust without being overdone. The signature seasoned tortilla chips along with a container of Julio’s salsa (hot or mild) can usually be found at any gathering, whether it is a wedding party or football game. For many, once they’ve tried it, they are regular customers. Despite all the obstacles the Garcia family has overcome, loyal, enthusiastic customers explain the success of Julio’s Seasoning and Corn Chips.

As the father of ten children, Julio T. Garcia held many jobs throughout his life. But it was in the field of being a chef that he found his calling. As the head chef at the Branding Iron Steak House in north Del Rio, he earned a magnificent reputation for his steaks because of his secret seasoning. The Branding Iron, still standing today, now houses a real estate brokerage. But it was a favorite gathering place for many Del Rioans in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The restaurant’s owner played the piano on busy nights. One busy evening, Garcia was so overwhelmed with orders for his steaks that he released his frustration by banging on the grill and overhead pots and pans with his cooking utensils. He released his anger above the piano chords, but the fury turned to harmony as he redirected his random noise into rhythm with the piano. As time went on, Garcia added his hearty voice to his “pots and pans” percussion, singing the Spanish standard, “El Rancho Grande.” The patrons instantly loved it, and Julio Garcia became an institution at the Del Rio steak house.

The Branding Iron eventually closed, and Garcia moved down the street to operate the kitchen at another restaurant. He was there for five years when a new manager took over and decided to expand the bar as the expense of the restaurant. Garcia eventually quit and joined the ranks of the unemployed.

Lillia Garcia, Julio’s wife, operated a small catering business out of their home kitchen in addition to her job as a cook at the local school district. With time on his hands, Julio pitched in to help. Julio learned his wife’s recipe for salsa, and being experienced in running a commercial kitchen, he devised a more efficient process to prepare it.

Lillia prepared tamales and enchiladas for her catering customers. She gave away corn tortilla chips as a value-added condiment. One day a Del Rio bank hired the Garcias to cater a party. The next day, they were surprised to receive a second order from the bank, but they only wanted more chips, not tamales, tacos, or enchiladas. Then more orders for chips from bank employees arrived.

The Garcias were finding out what many entrepreneurs discover. No matter how YOU want your customers to use your service or product, the market will surprise you and your customers will flock to an item you never thought had much value. In the Garcias’ case, the chips they labored to make and give away to complement their main course became all the rage.

Julio worked night and day preparing corn chips in his home kitchen for a rapidly growing base of customers who would knock on the door of their home at all hours of the day and night buy them. But Julio, with a large family and little time, was already buried in debt from his lengthy unemployment.

That is when he accepted a job at a Del Rio convenience store, working the graveyard shift from 11 p.m. until 7 a.m. While tending the counter those late evenings, Julio observed that the retiring late-night partiers returning from Mexico seemed to prefer purchasing small trays of nachos made with typical round chips and processed cheese. Julio thought his chips and salsa would be a better product and presented his idea to the store manager. The manager agreed to buy chips and salsa from Julio.

“My dad would come home at seven-thirty in the morning and start cooking chips. At five o’clock he took a nap and was out the door with six cans of corn chips at 10:30 p.m., just in time to make the night shift at the convenience store. On weekends, he’d take ten cans of chips,” his son Miguel Garcia of Del Rio said. This was in addition to the drive-up customers to their home. “In the day, people would walk in our house and maybe buy two or three boxes of chips. That is all we could handle. So we bought a used fryer and hooked it up,” added Miguel.

The fryer required a 220-volt hookup, and Lillia became uneasy with how her kitchen had been converted to a commercial operation. Miguel and the children agreed to solve the problem by remodeling the garage and moving the corn chip cooking operation there. “She told me, ‘Miguel you better go fix that garage because your dad is taking up too much space!’” Miguel said.

With the help of friends and the other siblings, Miguel was able to remodel the garage into a makeshift commercial kitchen. “We had an electrician hook up the fryer but the exhaust fan was a regular fan we purchased from Wal-Mart and placed in the window,” he said.

After he completed the garage, Miguel thought the building needed more color, so he asked his dad, “Can I buy some paint?” Julio agreed and Miguel went to the store and bought paint in three colors, bright yellow, red and green. “I said, ‘Dad, we’re going to be the yellow house’,” Miguel explained, after he painted the garage at 410 Avenue B in Del Rio bright yellow with red and green trim. To this day, bright yellow, red and green are the company colors.

As Julio’s sold more chips, Miguel and his dad bought more fryers, each stand-alone units, to increase the volume. “All the while, dad was paying everyone off to get out of debt,” Miguel explained.

By 1993, Julio’s older son Jose was working two jobs. One was at the local newspaper as the circulation manager. The other was at home, at the family business. “I thought to myself that if I can sell newspaper subscriptions, which I thought was challenging, I know I can sell something I really care about: Chips and salsa,” Jose recalled.

“Jose worked the front counter back then. Customers would come in so fast, I remember all he had time to say all day was ‘Yes sir! Thank you! Bye!’” Miguel said. “Jose was the real go-getter of the family.”

Jose added, “Dad was afraid that the small business couldn’t support all of us. We told him, ‘don’t worry dad, we’ll make enough money to take care of us all. Don’t worry about us!’”

Jose boldly quit his secure, salaried job and jumped in the family business with both feet. He went to Eagle Pass and attempted to expand Julio’s market along the border. “I tried it in Eagle Pass for six months, but didn’t believe the Eagle Pass market was going to be large enough,” Jose said. At about that time, Jose and his brother Miguel went for a long drive. “We came to the San Angelo to look around, and I liked what I saw,” Jose recalled.

Right after the trip, Jose went back to Eagle Pass, gathered his fixtures, and moved north to San Angelo with a ton of hope and a big heart, but not much money. He found a building on S. Bryant Street and set forth to build his kitchen, but quickly found that San Angelo city codes were different from Del Rio’s. “The building already had a large fan in a window. I set up the fryer I brought with me in front of it, just like we did in Del Rio, but the fire marshal and the health inspector told me I would have to add fire suppression and a vented hood. It would cost me anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000. I almost went into shock. There was no way I could afford all of the requirements,” Jose said. Fortunately, the city and Jose came to an understanding that he would import the chips and salsa from Del Rio for the time being, foregoing the code requirements.

“We couldn’t afford to advertise, so I decided to use the ‘taste test method.’ I put some chips in little sandwich bags and a little plastic cup of salsa along with a flyer and passed them around the neighborhood and to employees at local business,” Jose said. Convinced that once people try our product, they will be sold. They’re hooked,” Jose said. Business grew, but it didn’t grow as rapidly as Jose had hoped. Jose said, “I thought it would be like it was in Del Rio, with people coming to us, but Julio’s wasn’t known in San Angelo like it is in Del Rio.”

Hard work and perseverance paid off eventually. Lee’s Superette on Martin Luther King St. heard about Jose and his phenomenal chips and salsa. They struck a deal to carry the chips in their store. “Lee Robles, manager of Lee’s Superette, told me, ‘I’d love to sell your chips, but not in those buckets.’ He gave me 20 ice bags and the little twisty ties and said ‘put ‘em in here and bring me some chips tomorrow,’” Jose recalled.

The next break came when Hastings Records on Knickerbocker Rd. agreed to carry Jose’s product. “There we used the buckets. People would bring back their empty buckets and get a discount,” Jose said.

Business grew steadily, as Jose continued to prospect for more shelf space at grocery stores. The next big break came in Lubbock at United Supermarkets. Jose admits his presentation wasn’t as polished as he hoped it would be. “They saw the bags, the little zip-lock bags, and they said, ‘we’ll let you know,’” Jose said. Before he left the meeting with the buyer for United, Jose gave the rep some bags of chips and a container of hot sauce. “I told the buyer to just let the board members try the product. You gotta try the product,” Jose told him.

“They must have tried the product because soon I received the call very shortly thereafter and we were in United’s Stores,” Jose said. Applying the lessons learned during the guerilla marketing campaign conducted when he first arrived in San Angelo, the day Julio’s Corn Chips went on sale in Lubbock, Jose and a crew prepared sample bags of chips and cups of salsa to give away as samples. They gave them out at high traffic areas, businesses, and barbershops around each United Supermarket Store “The next morning, United called and said, ‘we’re out of chips. Our shelves are empty!’” Jose recalled.

The United deal enhanced Jose’s confidence. He landed bigger accounts, including HEB, Albertsons, and eventually Wal-Mart. Now Julio’s Corn Chips, manufactured in the small factory on S. Chadbourne, are on the shelves of Wal-Marts in Abilene, Midland, Lubbock, Fort Worth and Dallas.

Growth was now brisk. In 1995, Jose moved Julio’s from the original S. Bryant location to 3308 Knickerbocker Rd. He installed a full kitchen facility there to prepare fresh chips daily for this growing list of wholesale clients. However, by 2001 Julio’s outgrew the Knickerbocker location and Jose chose to buy a larger facility that is today the current headquarters for San Angelo at 1911 S. Chadbourne.

“I didn’t really know what to do about the Knickerbocker location, but my son, Jose Jr., suggested an expansion of the product line to include breakfast burritos sold directly to the public. Jose Jr. gave it a try,” Jose said. As a result, Jose Jr. now manages the Knickerbocker store.

The choice of eggs, bacon, sausage, guiso, barbacoa, potatoes and a host of other fillings folded inside a flour tortilla is a popular staple in Texas. In San Angelo they are known as breakfast burritos. However in Del Rio and elsewhere along the border, the same delicacy is called a breakfast taco. Whatever they should be called is incidental. The Knickerbocker location, and the expanded menu was an overwhelming success.

It has been so successful that Julio’s also sells breakfast burritos direct to the public at its S. Chadbourne location as well. The menu is expanding. The Julio’s Big and Juicy Home Style Burgers are now on sale for lunch at all locations. It is sold in a burger basket, complete with fries, all seasoned with the famous Julio’s seasoning. “We don’t buy the patties, instead we make the patties out of fresh ground meat,” Jose explained. Complimented with fresh lettuce, tomato, and onions, the burger basket is a popular choice for today’s patrons.

In 2006, Julio’s expanded its restaurant business by adding a third location at 720 W. 29th St. in North San Angelo. Of course the business model is working, and that is the main reason for the expansion. However, Jose has another explanation to offer. Last year, his wife Brenda gave birth to their third child, Leeanna. “Now that I have three children, I have one location for each,” Jose said laughing.

Jose still works closely with his brother Miguel in Del Rio. Down South, Julio’s built a major manufacturing plant to handle the ever-growing list of wholesale accounts in South Texas and Houston. Miguel also borrowed a page out of Jose’s book by opening a full service restaurant.

Looking toward the future, Jose remains focused on growth. The 1985 graduate of Del Rio High School is still young. Today, Julio’s in San Angelo has 25 employees. In the future, Jose anticipates he will upgrade and add capacity to the factory here (and add more jobs). He is also anticipating opening a full service sit-down restaurant.

Jose’s success, like his father’s, is due to his adamant desire to provide his customers with friendly, courteous service and his products with the highest quality ingredients. Jose’s wife Brenda helps with the business. They have three children, Jose Jr., Adriana, and Leeanna.

Julio’s is open Monday through Friday 7 a.m. until 2 p.m. at all three locations. They serve breakfast and lunch “to go.” In addition, Julio’s Corn Chips are available on the chip aisle at all major supermarkets and convenience stores in the region. If you haven’t already, make sure to try them with Julio’s Salsa, hot or mild. They’re delicious!