Patsy Aguilar longed to bring a taste of the Mexican city of Mazatlán to Colorado.

She and her husband excelled in the kitchen, whipping up fresh seafood and ceviches from their homeland. But when it came to starting a business, they didn’t know where to begin.

Through social media, Aguilar discovered a Commerce City-based nonprofit offering Spanish-language business classes geared for Colorado’s Latino community, teaching the basics of finance, marketing, administration and U.S. culture.

Adelante Community Development even hosts a boot camp for entrepreneurs who dream of opening their own food truck — the Sal y Pimienta, or Salt and Pepper, program.

Now, Aguilar and her husband Ramon Lizarraga’s food truck, Pata Salada Ceviches, is so successful, they’re expanding.

“We Hispanics are hard workers,” Aguilar said. “We always try to do better and better, but sometimes we don’t have the right information, so that’s why Adelante makes a lot of difference in our community.”

Latino-owned companies are the fastest-growing segment of the United States’ business population, according to a 2023 report from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. U.S. Latinos own nearly 5 million businesses, generating more than $800 billion in annual revenue. Latino-owned businesses grew 57% in the U.S. between 2007 and 2022, whereas white-owned businesses grew 5% in the same time period, the report found.

Latinos themselves contribute more than $3.7 trillion to the nation’s economy, helping drive growth in the country.

In Colorado, more than 90,000 small businesses are Hispanic-owned, with Hispanics making up 20% of the state’s workforce and nearly 14% of its business owners, according to 2024 data from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Adelante Community Development founder Maria Gonzalez has her hand in building the largest Latino business ecosystem in Colorado. By providing training programs, she wants to ensure the state’s Latino entrepreneurs have the knowledge and support they need to succeed — particularly at a time when Latinos can feel attacked by a presidential administration hostile toward diversity and immigrants.

“As long as we’re doing things the right way, waking up with the most amazing energy, we are going to do good,” Gonzalez said. “We’re being targeted in this crucial moment, but all I hear in our meetings is, ‘We’re going to move forward.’ Yes, this might be very painful and hateful, but at the end of the day, we don’t give up. We’re very resilient, we’re hard workers and we are here to thrive.”

Building generational wealth

Gonzalez, who has been an entrepreneur for 25 years, struggled to keep her insurance business afloat during the Great Recession. She lost her house through foreclosure and her vehicle was repossessed. She didn’t know how to help her business recover and noticed other Latino business owners struggling without resources.

She became the resource she needed, founding Adelante in the mid-2000s after learning from local business courses.

Adelante offers multiple courses a year — all in Spanish — on accounting, digital strategy, business administration and helping entrepreneurs navigate the complicated web of licenses, insurance, taxes and regulations.

“We didn’t know how to register the business, so Maria helped us do that,” Aguilar said. “We didn’t know anything about taxes. The health department. The inventory. Now, we have a successful business and are planning on expanding.”

Pata Salada Ceviches, which imports its seafood from Mexico for authentic flavors, opened in 2023 after Aguilar went through Adelante’s $750 food truck training program. The organization offers scholarships for community members in need, although the federal funding backing that aid has since dried up, Gonzalez said. Adelante is looking for new grants.

Denver has been recognized as among the best places in the nation to start a food truck, but Gonzalez said the regulations to operate mobile businesses within metro Denver make the venture a bureaucratic mess.

“Food truck regulation is a nightmare in Colorado,” Gonzalez said.

To open a food truck, an owner might need to secure 10 to 15 different licenses, she said, and if an operator drives down the road to a new jurisdiction, all those licenses and regulations can become moot. That red tape can be confusing for anyone, but especially someone who doesn’t speak English, Gonzalez said.

Adelante helps its clients navigate the licenses and regulations, but is also pushing for legislation to make the process easier.

Gonzalez said she’s working with state Rep. Manny Rutinel, an Adams County Democrat, to pass a food truck operations bill that would establish a reciprocal licensing and permitting system between local jurisdictions so food truck operators wouldn’t need entirely new licenses to operate in a nearby city, like when crossing between Denver and Aurora.

In addition to the permitting, Gonzalez also helps her clients develop menus, design logos and strategize social media marketing.

Plus, the Latino-centric courses educate clients on cultural differences, such as the prevalence of paying with debit and credit cards in the U.S. compared to Mexico, where people predominantly use cash.

Financially, Gonzalez said a food truck can be a more affordable and less risky operation for a fledgling entrepreneur. Adelante has supported more than 200 food truck operators, Gonzalez said.

“You could buy a food truck within $10,000 and then go send it to a fabricator to make it compliant and pay another $20,000 and you’ve already got a business,” Gonzalez said.

Pata Salada Ceviches has plans to open a stall inside La Plaza Colorado, a sprawling Latino market and food hall in Aurora. With Adelante’s continued guidance, Aguilar dreams of owning brick-and-mortar ceviche joints in the future.

“I know if I build this business right, I can leave something for my two kids and they are going to benefit,” Aguilar said. “We try to explain that to them. They see us working hard and doing things right, and I hope one day they can keep doing this.”

Harry Hollines is the chief strategy officer at the Colorado-based Latino Leadership Institute, where he oversees the institute’s entrepreneurship accelerator, LEAP.

Hollines believes the future growth of the U.S. economy hinges on the success of Latino entrepreneurship. He sees Latino business ownership growing along with the state’s demographic shifts. By 2050, Latinos are expected to make up nearly 30% of the U.S. population.

Since 2000, Colorado’s Latino population has grown 72% — twice the state’s overall population growth rate of 35%, according to the University of California, Los Angeles’s Latino Policy & Politics Institute. Latinos are the second largest racial or ethnic group in the state, at 22% of the population

While Hollines is heartened to see the growth in Latino businesses, he said there needs to be an understanding of the difference between businesses making income and building wealth.

Latino-owned businesses tend to be smaller in scale, with only about 5% of Latino-owned businesses in the U.S. having employees and fewer than 3% generating more than $1 million annually, Hollines said. This means they have a harder time generating wealth at the company and ownership levels and within the community by creating workforces.

More resources should go toward helping Latino-owned businesses expand and grow, he said.

“If we don’t have entrepreneurs growing relative to the demographic shifts happening, you’re not going to have as many businesses, not going to have as many places to buy from and the dollars won’t circulate from the economy at the same rate,” Hollines said. “Latino businesses are important because we’re talking about the backbone of the U.S. and Colorado economy.”

“We need to feel secure”

In 2019, Erica Rojas was driving with her five kids when her car gave out. She called a local mechanic, who told her he didn’t like working with women.

The more Rojas talked with other women, the more she heard similar stories about women being disrespected or made to feel uncomfortable at auto repair shops.

The Aurora resident wanted to create a mechanic experience that not only catered to women, but also taught them basic car maintenance — like how to change a tire or use jumper cables — so they could feel empowered.

The move would be a career change for Rojas, who previously ran a catering business. She loved to cook but struggled to keep up with the administrative side.

“We need to feel secure, and we need to learn,” Rojas said.

Rojas, a native Spanish speaker, connected with Adelante and took its business courses. The organization helped her create a business plan and bring her idea — Pink Auto Services — to life. The small business is expected to open this fall in Aurora.

“Everything was up here,” Rojas said, tapping her head. “Now, it’s here in my business plan, and I can show other people.”

Rojas recently met with representatives of Pickens Technical College in Aurora to discuss a partnership in which the school’s auto technician students could get experience working at her shop.

Not only did Rojas learn from Adelante’s courses, but she said the organization’s one-on-one mentoring makes her feel like she has someone on her side as she enters uncharted career territory.

“Latinos need a space like this,” Rojas said. “Adelante is different. I see Adelante like my family. They make me feel comfortable, and I learn so much.”

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