Hispanics work for success

Fidel Benavides works construction and manages his music shop, Nexcy Spanish Grocery No. 2.

Angel Morales works as production supervisor for Wire Co. World Group and as a real estate agent for Coldwell Banker while operating Corona Market.

H.A. Perez worked at Rose Acre Farms collecting chicken eggs during El Tapatio’s early days.

These three business owners are typical of Sedalia’s Hispanic entrepreneurs who work more than one job to make their dreams come true.

“Starting a business takes up a lot of time. We started with a limited amount of money,” Morales said. “And we only spent as much as we had. In general, a business takes two or three years to take off, and when you start off running up debt, you’re starting in a bad position.”

The Perez family members had the advantage of knowing the restaurant business when they opened El Tapatio in 1995, said Maria de Jesus Perez, wife of owner Heraclio Perez.

She attributes the family restaurant’s success to a desire to adapt quickly.

“We left so much back in Mexico — our traditions, our family and our language,” she said. “When you leave all of that, you’re willing to face everything that comes your way. Not just work, but everything.”

Her husband, Heraclio, and their daughter, Minerva, were the first of the family to make their way to Sedalia, and both took
second jobs while they opened the business. While H.A. picked up eggs, Minerva worked as a housekeeper and restaurant server at night.
It paid off.

“We celebrated our 13th anniversary (at the restaurant) Monday (April 7),” Maria de Jesus Perez said. And the restaurant is growing. The Perez family is opening another El Tapatio in Olathe, Kan., this month.

The key to running a successful business for many of Sedalia’s immigrant entrepreneurs has been adapting to local needs.

“It was really funny. When we first got here, none of us had ever worked together this way in a different country with foods we had never made before,” Minerva Perez said. “We couldn’t just bring the foods we knew from Mexico. We had to adapt them to the style here.”

Among the foods they had to learn to make were the chimichanga and the burrito.

“We didn’t know the chimichanga, and we had heard of burritos, but they weren’t common in Jalisco (Mexico),” Maria de Jesus Perez said.

Morales started his business Corona Market about three years ago with Pedro Corona, who owns his own store in La Monte. Now the sole owner of the Sedalia store, Morales has put a credit card machine in the shop to attract American clientele.

First tries don’t always work out, but  entrepreneurs have learned to make lemonade out of limón.

Benavides, originally from El Salvador, turned his grocery store into a music shop when he saw a lack of certain types of Hispanic businesses in the area.

“There aren’t that many Hispanic music stores in central Missouri,” Benavides said.

Benavides has had Nexcy Spanish Grocery No. 2 at his East Third Street location for eight years. Two years ago, he decided to make the switch.
“I just got tired of the grocery store business. You don’t make that much selling food since people can go to the bigger chains to get what they need,” he said.

Some business owners have been able to lighten their workload; others have taken on more duties as their stature rises. The Perez family is a long way from cleaning houses and collecting eggs. Now working solely in the restaurant business, the family has also expanded into sports with a soccer field in Knob Noster. Last summer they hosted their first soccer tournament at Perez Soccer Fields, and they plan to continue the new tradition with a tournament in September.

Morales hosts a Saturday morning show on KSIS radio, “Sábados Latinos.” (Latino Saturdays in English).

 Benavides is still building houses to supplement his income from the music store.

Even though working at the store is time consuming and hard, Benavides said it’s something he must continue doing.

“We can’t live without music. It’s what feeds us,” he said.