A Hot Idea : Mom’s Recipe for Success Was Salsa, Lots of Hard Work

OCEANSIDE —  Three years ago, Laura Allen was an out-of-work apprentice pipe fitter with $250 and a hot idea.

Allen has since turned that idea into Chachies, a salsa company that, using a homespun recipe, generates $500,000 in annual sales.

The chunky, spicy tomato sauce that boasts freshly chopped vegetables has gone from the family picnic table to grocery shelves at Vons, Safeway and Alpha Beta. Allen, who once used her car to deliver the salsa to corner stores near her Oceanside home, each day dispatches six refrigerated vans and trucks to grocery stores in San Diego, Riverside and Orange counties.

But when it comes to advertising, Allen and her partner, Carol Boyd, rely on taste buds, not talk.

Allen clinched her first sale by asking the owner of a small grocery to taste her salsa.

“I don’t know who was more intimidated, me or them,” she said. “But once they got a mouthful in, I had no trouble.”

On that first day, she sold five small liquor and grocery stores on stocking her product. Within hours, the first store had sold 12 bottles and was on the phone asking for more.

Within a week Allen had Chachies on shelves at 20 small stores in Oceanside, Carlsbad and Vista--and had recovered her initial $250 investment. In less that two months she was packaging 300 eight-ounce jars daily and breaking even, not bad for someone just trying to earn some extra money during a two-month layoff.

Allen created Chachies in early 1983 after family members determined that her recipe tasted far better than a popular, homemade salsa sold in a nearby corner grocery.

Allen, a childhood cook who had managed a Mexican restaurant for five years and had run an informal catering business, decided to try to sell salsa. Allen’s daughter named the sauce Chachies, after a character in the television show “Happy Days.”

The first night she and her teen-age daughter Barbara used a friend’s delicatessen kitchen to whip up 65, eight-ounce containers.

“Then, I got very nervous,” Allen said. “I thought, gosh, if this doesn’t work I am going to shoot myself.”

For 18 months, the two spent five hours a day mixing salsa in the deli’s kitchen.

Allen credits Barbara with keeping the salsa operation going.

“She encouraged me and propped me up when I was working 14-hour days and getting up at 5 a.m. to get to my day job,” said Allen, who quipped that she “did a lot of sleeping on weekends.”

When the pipe fitters’ union called Allen back to work, she hired her ex-husband’s sister, Boyd, a recent San Diego State University graduate, to handle sales and distribution.

In the beginning, Allen saw the salsa business as a way to generate income to buy nice things for her daughter.

“By God, I thought, the only way to get it was to work,” said Allen, a single parent. “I only had myself to rely on, and I just buckled down and did it.”

In 1984, Allen moved Chachies into a 1,200-square-foot storefront and spent more than $2,000 on equipment. The pipe fitter surprised skeptical neighbors by building her own walk-in cooler.

Soon, Chachies was turning out enough salsa to supply 75 small stores, and Allen took out a loan to buy a delivery van.

The salsa operation went big time less than two years ago when Los Angeles-based Alpha Beta gave Chachies a 90-day trial in its Encinitas store.

Boyd and Allen spent two weekends at the store, handing out samples. Sales at that store hit $550 during the first week.

“We couldn’t keep it on the shelf,” said Allen, and Alpha Beta subsequently increased Chachies’ shelf space tenfold.

Allen now employs four drivers and purchases fresh onions from Bakersfield and cilantro from San Diego’s downtown produce market. Chachies’ $20,000 monthly payroll includes 17 employees who make the salsa and hand out samples at grocery stores.

But despite the $2,000 monthly salary that Chachies generates, Allen will continue full-time as a pipe fitter until several new products are established and the company breaks into the lucrative Los Angeles market.

“The hardest thing is getting larger markets to give you a break . . . (persuading) . . . them that you do have a good product and that it will sell,” Allen said.

She has already expanded to make a product of hot, spiced Mexican-style carrots, an idea that came from construction workers she worked with on her pipe-fitting job. She chose a recipe that was more flavorful--and less spicy--than the product sold in restaurants.

Allen and Boyd also sell tortilla chips and hot and mild salsa in three sizes under the Chachies name.

“The more that you have on the shelf, the more people become accustomed to seeing your products,” said Allen, who wants Chachies to be known for making “good-quality products.”

Consequently, Chachies takes complaints seriously.

When a handful of customers complained that the salsa--which contains no preservatives and only fresh ingredients--was too chunky, she hand-delivered a more carefully chopped batch to their homes.

That role as a local company has helped Chachies gain a following, Allen believes.

“People have more sympathy for you when they know we are local,” Allen said. “We are just little boys, and we listen.”