Falcon Focus: Spicin’ it up with Mrs. A’s Famous Salsa Buena

Ceramics teacher Leah Aguayo has so many bags of tortilla chips stacked up against her desk in her office, adjacent to the ceramics room, that one might think she owns a salsa company. In fact, she does.

Aguayo, who has been working as a ceramics teacher at Saratoga High for the past 29 years, also leads a double life as the head of Mrs. A’s Famous Salsa Bueno, a company she founded seven years ago at the urging of her students.

For years, she brought in food, including her salsa. Students apparently were so enamored of the salsa that they convinced Aguayo to start producing it commercially.

“The class told me, ‘You have to market this. We can’t wait for you [to bring it in]. We want to be able to buy it,’” Aguayo said.

Aguayo thought about the idea for weeks. On the third week, Daniel Yang ‘02 approached her. He wanted to design her label. Yang advised Aguayo to buy samples of all her competitors’ salsas, and then used those as inspiration to designing Agauyo’s.

“We had a class discussion about the name,” Aguayo said. “Famous Amos and Mrs. Field’s. OK, it’s got to be Mrs. A’s Famous Bueno Salsa. Within three months we were ready to go.”
Aguayo said she first had to take something from her kitchen to the marketplace.

To start her business, she had to learn about bar codes, trademarks and the nutrition of her product. Not only that, she had to produce the salsa in a commercial kitchen, not in her home.
Aguayo began going to various stores and asking them to buy her salsa. She fondly recounted her dialogue with the first vendor she went to.

“I had a container of salsa, and a bag of chips, and I went into my local market. I can remember the two owners just standing down an aisle. They were smiling at me. I was a customer, I spent money in their store,” said Aguayo. “I said, ‘Can I have you taste something? I’m thinking about marketing this.’ ”

After sampling her salsa, the managers immediately said that they would be her first store.

Since that initial exchange, more than 100 stores, including Whole Foods, have sold or now sell her salsa.

“It took me three years to get into Whole Foods,” Aguayo said. “And only in Northern California, because [each chain] has regions.”

Aguayo said she hopes that Mrs. A’s will be picked up by a couple of major chains.

“I’m still chasing Safeway,” Aguayo said. “I’ve been in Safeway’s corporate offices several times. I’ve been close several times, waiting for the call that doesn’t happen. Trader Joe’s is another one I’ve called.”

Agauyo said she has been cooking since she was 8.

“I can’t stand to go shopping,” Aguayo said. “But I can spend hours in a grocery store, just going down the isles looking for food.”

Agauyo said that although she has Mexican heritage, she did not learn to make salsa from her family.

“Probably about 20 years ago, a friend of mine was over at my house and he said ‘Let’s make salsa.’” Aguayo said. “This is what my grandma does.’ So it came from a Hispanic grandma.”

Recently, Aguayo recruited Yang, now a designer in Los Angeles, to redesign the brand’s label.

“We just changed the whole label to be more descriptive,” Aguayo said. “People nowadays don’t want to read.” Accordingly, the label now displays icons to convey information about the salsa: “one chili for medium, two chilis for hot and an onion with a cross through it.”