Restaurateur Adelo Ramirez hung a campaign sticker on the front door of his small tortilla factory in New Rochelle this summer. It touts Rob Astorino”™s re-election as Westchester County executive in his race against New Rochelle”™s mayor, Noam Bramson. For Ramirez, it”™s a business owner”™s sign of gratitude for the help he recently received from Astorino”™s county administration.
Ramirez more often can be found at his two restaurants in Port Chester. Now 36, he was 5 when he arrived in that village with his sister from the state of Puebla in east-central Mexico. He began working in the restaurant business at 14 ”“ having lied about his age, he said ”“ and at 23 opened his own business, Los Gemelos Restaurant and Tortilleria, at 167 Westchester Ave. in Port Chester. In July, he opened a second restaurant, Pollos Al Carbon, at 6 N. Pearl St. in his adopted hometown.
In Port Chester, Ramirez also turned out Los Gemelos-brand corn tortillas in an 1,800-square-foot tortilleria attached to his restaurant. Needing more space for manufacturing, he looked for other locations in Port Chester but found none.
“New Rochelle was one of the places where I wanted to do something like this,” said Ramirez, who now produces only chips and tostadas at his Port Chester restaurant. In 2006, he opened a 2,200-square-foot tortilleria on Third Street in the heart of New Rochelle”™s Mexican neighborhood.
“This was originally an Italian bakery 20, 30 years ago,” Ramirez said. “It was vacant for about five years when I came in.” He employs three full-time workers there.
The tortilleria”™s gas-fired oven and conveyor system can produce 6,000 tortillas an hour. “We don”™t make the volume that every other tortilleria makes,” Ramirez said, “but we do make a very good quality tortilla” that retains its firmness longer than other brands when used in tacos.
“This is our second brand,” he said, holding a 26-ounce package of Viva Michoacan tortillas. Its label depicts Joseph and Mary journeying by donkey through a desert where a green cactus grows.
Michoacan is a state in Mexico, though Ramirez has no familial connections there. He chose the name for his brand and manufacturing company, Viva Michoacan L.L.C., “because there”™s a lot of people from Michoacan in New Rochelle,” he said.
“Our tortilla unfortunately is a little bit too expensive for the restaurant business,” he said. Instead his company sells to neighborhood bodegas and small groceries in the county.
“Our product is only in New Rochelle, Mamaroneck, Port Chester, White Plains and a little bit in Yonkers,” he said. “Yonkers has its own tortilleria, but yet people are coming here to pick up.” The Viva Michoacan brand is sold only in Mexican neighborhoods in New Rochelle and Mount Vernon, he said.
Ramirez saw an opportunity to expand his tortilla business about five years ago when a top executive from Union Square Sports & Entertainment stopped by his Port Chester tortilleria. A division of Union Square Events, USSE was starting restaurant concessions at Citi Field, the new ballpark of the New York Mets that opened in 2009. The company was launching a new stadium venture there, El Verano Taqueria, a taco stand serving Mexican food.
On a return visit to Los Gemelos, the executive, a Rye resident, told Ramirez he had decided to use his tortillas in Queens.
The tortilla-maker”™s stadium business has grown to include Union Square”™s taquerias at Saratoga Race Course, the thoroughbred horse racing track in Saratoga Springs, and Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., the 5-year-old home of the Washington Nationals major league baseball club.
“I”™m hoping they get the Giants stadium for soccer games,” Ramirez said of his Union Square partner.
Ramirez continued to seek opportunities to grow his New Rochelle business beyond its core bodega trade. He credits Joseph Kenner, a village trustee in Port Chester and senior adviser for governmental operations to Astorino, for opening doors in county government to the restaurateur.
“I called him my godfather because he introduced me to all this,” he said.
Ramirez last spring met with county officials and was introduced to Jim Coleman, then the newly appointed executive director of the Westchester County Industrial Development Agency. Coleman also serves as Astorino”™s liaison officer for the county”™s minority- and women-owned business enterprise initiatives.
Coleman suggested he meet with the county IDA board, Ramirez recalled. “I was intimidated. I said, ”˜I don”™t know.”™ To be honest, I didn”™t know what he was talking about. I didn”™t even know what ”˜IDA”™ stood for.”
The tax incentives that IDAs offer businesses making investments that create or retain jobs were not what Ramirez wanted. “I want to pay taxes,” he said. He simply wanted to find new customers for his business.
Coleman arranged a meeting with executives at Krasdale Foods Inc., the 105-year-old grocery distributor headquartered on the Platinum Mile in Harrison.
“I”™ve always had my eyes on Krasdale,” Ramirez said. “They”™re a big distributor”¦I knew it was almost impossible to get a company that size to look at a company my size.”
“He (Coleman) picked up the phone,” Ramirez recalled. “He called Mitch (Mitchell Klein, Krasdale”™s vice president of government relations), set up the meeting.”
“He didn”™t even stop there. He went with me to that meeting, and that is something not everyone does.”
“Because of that meeting, I got into 12 stores,” Ramirez said. Krasdale arranged to place Los Gemelos tortillas in 12 C-Town Supermarket stores in New Rochelle and Queens and Danbury, Norwalk and Bridgeport, Conn.
Now Ramirez hopes that Krasdale will agree to distribute Los Gemelos tortillas from its own fleet of trucks based at its Bronx distribution center. Ramirez now must use his company”™s trucks to deliver to stores from Bridgeport to Jackson Heights. It is costly and time-consuming, he said.
With the Krasdale deal in place, the tortilleria owner has his sights on other potential partners.
“We”™re hoping a company like Sysco, US Foods would get an interest in our brands,” he said.
The candidate who apparently has won the vote of New Rochelle”™s tortilleria owner in a press release said he is “so proud of Adelo.”
“There are many creative and hard-working entrepreneurs in Westchester,” Astorino said. “Sometimes they just need to be connected to the right people at the right time.”
