Cositas Deliciosas - Telling Their Story

A story short with Cositas Deliciosas owners Miguel Xicohtencatl & Cecilia Serrano - Speaking on their professional and personal journey to establish this delicious Mexican fruit, juice, and take-out shop in the Fair Haven neighborhood of New Haven, CT. The full transcript of the interview is below. Listen by podcast or at the link above or check out this synched audio and photo slideshow.

This story is one in a six part series of BIPOC food business owners sponsored by The Yale School of the Environment. We hope these stories inspire you to check out these delicious family run businesses (if you are lucky enough to live near by), and to spend more time getting to know the people in your community who make and sell food. Stories produced by our host Tagan Engel, edited by Jon Oliver Music, photographed by Maza Rey Photography.

Transcript of Miguel Xicohtencatl and Cecilia Serrano of Cositas Deliciosas

Miguel: My name is Miguel Xicohtencatl.

Cecelia: My name is Cecilia Serrano.

Miguel: My business is named Cositas Deliciosas. Me and my wife, we've been together 11 years. We have two kids. We've been working together since we opened the business. I think it's one of the best things can ever happen for whoever opens a business because a team makes the business go well. And me and my wife, we like to work together. We split the work. She makes the tamales. I'm the one to handle other things, and then we're happy to be working together.

At my store, we sell fruit salads, smoothies, fresh fruit waters, ice creams, breakfast, Mexican tamales, quesadillas, sandwiches, too. We have a big selection of fruit. It's all fresh. We cut every day. We have a little bit of everything

We make at the store three kinds of fruit. If the people want only fruit, we serve that. The second choice is with salt, lime, Chamoy, Valentina,Tajín, that will make it spicy, or we serve sweet. That means it comes with yogurt, granola, honey, and condensed milk.

Cecelia: Sometimes we work in the front making fruits, and sometimes we work in in the kitchen, preparing salsas for the tamales. Me gusta atendera todos los clientes… (I like to serve all the customers who come in to buy things at our store. And I like to make the natural juices and the fruit salads and to sell things)… y vender. Me gusta preparar las cosas… (I like to prepare their food so that they leave happy.)

Miguel: We like Fair Haven because we have people from all over the world. We have Mexicans, we have Puerto Ricans, and then we have from every country, I think. Fair Haven is something we like because we have many people from our country. They like what we serve. We know because the food it's from our state, from Puebla, from Tlaxcala. Grand Avenue is very popular. I think we are right in the middle of the street.

My business I've been owning since 2015. But in that time, it wasn't like it is right now. It used to be like a grocery store. For us, the business of grocery wasn't working because in these two blocks, we have like five other stores. I remember a guy who came to my store, he offered me to buy a snow cone machine. And then I started thinking about doing something different in the area. He told me, ‘Okay, if you want to learn, I want to show you something that I did in New York, Poughkeepsie.’ He showed me a few things like the fruit salads. His menu was very small. And then right from there, we start making the cholados, chamoyadas, empanadas, diablitos, that’s Mexican snow cones with spices - with Chamoy, Valentina, Tajíin - it's sweet and spicy, it's a very good drink.

Little by little, we started putting things together and learning things from other people, you know. Since then, we've been doing good, you know, people been loving it. This store, it's a lot of work in different areas, you know, my job is to supply everything for the store: all the fruit, all the food, to do the schedule for every person and then do the payroll, to pay every bill that comes with it, you know, it's a lot of work. It's not easy, but at the same time, it's something the mind gets used to. We’re open all day, too – we’re open from 7am to 10pm. So it's a lot of hours. Some people don’t come to work because they’re sick; some people just don’t like it. For us as owners, we have to be there no matter what. We are the only people that we are responsible for the business to keep running.

Cecelia: Sometimes it’s hard. We’re working a lot of hours. It’s a little, well difficult. Yeah, we work every day. I work nine to four o'clock every day. Tengo que sacar tiempo… (I need to set aside time for my family, for my business and to take care of the children.)

Miguel: I always like to get advice from people already in the business. One person who helped me a lot was my ex boss. I used to work for him for a long, long, long time. For many years, he owned a restaurant in West Haven – his name is Chris Walsh. He's the one who taught me and showed me how can I do things, how can I manage. How can I do the payroll, things like that, because when you come into business and you don’t know nothing, it’s very hard. But thank God, I have people who were there when I was working, who saw me working hard, so that now when I need it, they are always there.

So now, since we’ve been working hard, we have the opportunity to buy another store down the street. Its name is Justin Deli Market, where we sell sandwiches and grocery. And then that's one opportunity to us. I'm so happy with God first, because he gave me the opportunity to be here, and then to give the business.

I'm from Mexico – from Tlaxcala. I came here for the first time in 2002 when I was 15 years old. That was my dream to become a business owner and I've been working hard – two jobs a day. And my mind said that I cannot be doing this all the time. I have a dream, you know, I have my dreams – to live a better life, to enjoy. I like to live in this country because our life is better than in our country. That's why every person that comes to this country, comes for better opportunities. Thank God, we found everything that we were looking for, you know, and then we can have a better life for us and for our kids.

Cositas Deliciosas, 271 Grand Ave, New Haven, CT