As Mexican immigrants living in California, Ricardo Cervantes and Alfredo Livas noticed that there were a lot of Hispanic bakeries, but none of them seemed to have the particular sweet taste of the pastries in their native country.
“There was pan dulce but it didn't taste like what we were used to from back home,” Cervantes said recently in conversation with NBC and Telemundo.
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The former finance professionals have now turned that longing for a sweet treat from home into a thriving -- and growing -- business.
After years growing the company's physical footprint in stores around the Los Angeles area, the products are now sold in Costco stores all over the Southwest, in World Market locations nationwide, and in Albertsons, Vons, and Pavilions grocery stores in California.
How did it all start?
Cervantes and Livas are both from Monterrey, Mexico, but met as students at Stanford Graduate School of Business during the first days of their program.
At the time, neither Cervantes nor Livas had anything to do with the food and restaurant industry. Both were working in finance: Cervantes for a conglomerate of almost 30 companies and Livas for Morgan Stanley.
One afternoon, they were talking in the living room of the house they shared and realized they had been inspired the most by the entrepreneurial classes at Stanford. At the end of the conversation, they agreed to create a business together.
“Initially, it was going to look more like we could do this maybe part time,” Cervantes said. But as they did research and talked with professors, they decided that it's “one of those things where you have to burn the ships, you have to jump all in.”
Cervantes and Livas saw an opening for a chain of panaderías, or bakeries, in Los Angeles, and worked for almost two years creating La Monarca Bakery and Cafe.
They wanted a different type of Mexican bakery, one that made you want to buy flaky puff pastries and eat them there in the bakery itself.
While driving in different Hispanic neighborhoods in L.A., Cervantes and Livas noticed that there was a lot of activity but not a lot of investment from big franchises.
They talked with people in those big companies and were surprised by the reasoning: the areas didn’t meet their threshold of investment, Cervantes said they told them.
“We kind of took it a little personal because I'm like, 'OK, why wouldn't you invest in these neighborhoods?'” Cervantes said. “That was the mentality at the time,” he added.
Their experience talking to the big business groups also refocused their mission for La Monarca. Now, they also wanted to create community opportunities and care for the environment.
“This is not just going to be for the bread, for the pan dulce. This it's going to be a place that hopefully is aspirational, that we're going to bring this investment in the community and to create opportunities as well,” Cervantes said of their thought process.
Why the name “La Monarca”?
“Monarca” is the Spanish word for monarch, and refers to the butterfly that travels between 1,200 and 2,800 miles from the northeast of the U.S. and southeast of Canada to central Mexico each year, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Cervantes explained they chose the word because they wanted to represent the resilience and perseverance of the Mexican citizens, how hardworking they are, and how important family is to them.
“It was serendipitous, but at the same time, yes, aspirational,” Cervantes said.
“I was looking at different icons from Mexico for a couple days and then on the third day, I see a photo of a monarch and I was like, 'that's it,'” Cervantes said. “The story of the butterfly, to me, embodies perfectly what all those characteristics of our people were.”
To pay respect to those butterflies, Cervantes and Livas donate 1% of the sales of all La Monarca’s packaged products to EcoLife Conservation, an organization that protects and preserves the monarch butterflies.
From one location to selling at Costco
Their first store opened on Valentine’s Day in 2006 in Huntington Park, a suburb of Los Angeles. It was successful and busy from the start.
Cervantes believed their mission to create opportunities in the community is what helped them in their early days.
“We have hired locally… and then those people, of course, tell the people that they know that live in the community. And we very quickly, the word of mouth went around,” Cervantes said.
In 2022, one of their customers -- who turned out to be a buyer from Costco -- approached them because the retail company wanted to sell more Mexican and Hispanic products, and he liked what they had to offer.
Cervantes said the customer just reached out and asked if they were interested in selling products to Costco.
“It’s one of those moments where you have to pinch yourself a little bit and then, you have to very quickly go to 'how are we actually going to do it?'” he said.
After the initial contact, Cervantes and Livas had to learn how Costco operates and change their packaging.
“You have to work alongside their team to make it very custom to Costco, so there had to be a brand new packaging, not in the look or color, but the size, and then we’d never done a product in that quantity,” he explained.
“We got really, really good response, not just from the Costco customers but even from our own customers that they [were] happy to see us there,” Cervantes said.
Costco started selling La Monarca products in 12 stores in the L.A. region and as of now, they have expanded the products into nine states.
Ricardo Cervantes was interviewed for Bísness School, a series that tells the inspiring stories of Latino founders. Subscribe to Bísness School wherever you get your podcasts to get future episodes automatically. Remember, Business school is expensive. Bísness School is free.
