Mar 15, 2021 · 1h 18m · how-i-built-this
Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza
Miguel Garza · 26m spoken Veronica Garza · 24m spoken Guy Raz · 20m spoken Grandmother (Campos / Garza) · 4s spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, siblings Miguel and Veronica Garza recount how overcoming autoimmune illness and launching a family gym led to the creation of Siete Foods. Driven by their core family motto 'Juntos es Mejor', the Garzas scaled their grain-free Mexican-American food brand from a home kitchen experiment into a national enterprise in over 16,000 retail stores.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 29.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.1 Guest teaching 1.5 Guest disagreement 0.0 Guy pushing back 0.2
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:10:37 Miguel rejects traditional brand comparisons
Miguel firmly rejects the framing of Siete as simply another specialty or traditional brand, insisting they are building a distinct iconic Mexican-American food empire rather than another Tostitos or Mission.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 55:21 Guy Raz presses on high retail price barrierGuy presses on whether charging $10 to $12 for a pack of tortillas created an enormous hurdle and skepticism among consumers accustomed to cheap staples.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:01:10 Miguel explains warehouse moisture and mold contaminationMiguel educates the host on the costly logistics lesson of avoiding produce warehouses for tortillas due to ambient humidity and pervasive mold spores.
Guy holds their own ▶ 0:42 Guy Raz frames business pivots using classic entrepreneurial case studiesGuy showcases his deep familiarity with entrepreneurial history by comparing Siete's gym pivot to Starbucks, Shopify, and Stacy's Pita Chips.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overcoming Fear and Taking the Entrepreneurial Leap | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | The segment opens with brief soundbites followed by Guy Raz introducing the episode and framing the business journey through analogies to Starbucks, Shopify, and Stacy's Pita Chips. The dynamic is purely introductory and narrative. | |
| Growing Up in Laredo and Mexican-American Heritage | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz asks open-ended questions about growing up in Laredo, Texas, and the role of Mexican heritage and home-cooked meals in the Garza family. Miguel and Veronica share warm personal recollections. | |
| Veronica's Health Struggles and Post-College Career Path | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Veronica recounts her sudden diagnosis with ITP, lupus, and Hashimoto's at age 17 and her subsequent post-college career. Guy provides brief clinical framing on autoimmune conditions in an empathetic dialogue. | |
| Embracing CrossFit and Adopting the Paleo Diet | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | The conversation covers the family's joint adoption of the Paleo diet and CrossFit to support Veronica's health. Guy connects with the guests over his personal familiarity with paleo restrictions. | |
| Launching G7 Athletics CrossFit Gym in Laredo | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | The guests detail opening G7 Athletics gym in Laredo while working full-time jobs. Guy inquires about the financial realities and low margins of running a service-based boutique fitness business. | |
| Crafting the Grain-Free Almond Flour Tortilla Recipe | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Veronica shares how she secretly developed an almond flour tortilla recipe to recreate traditional family meals without lettuce wraps. A clip of their grandmother approving the tortilla serves as an emotional milestone. | |
| Mid-Show Teaser and Whole Foods Expansion Preview | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Veronica and Miguel describe selling tortillas informally at the gym and making their first retail pitch to Wheatsville Co-op in Austin with microwaved samples. The exchange is lighthearted and narrative-driven. | |
| Must B Nutty Operations and the Whole Foods Connection | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The founders describe operating under the initial name 'Must B Nutty' in a commercial gluten-free kitchen and getting connected to Whole Foods founder John Mackey through a serendipitous customer encounter. | |
| Mid-Show Teaser: Rebranding and the Spoiled Product Crisis | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Guy asks about pricing resistance given the $10-12 retail price point. The guests then explain rebranding to Siete and navigating a major crisis where a whole pallet of tortillas molded due to warehouse humidity. | |
| Co-Packing Automation and Developing Tortilla Chips | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The conversation moves to finding a co-packer in Austin, advice from Annie's CEO John Foraker to scale quickly, and expanding into grain-free tortilla chips after Miguel committed to Whole Foods ahead of R&D. | |
| Stripes Investment and Scaling the Family Business | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy and the founders discuss taking on a $90 million investment from Stripes and establishing Siete as an iconic Mexican-American brand across 16,000 retail stores while keeping family core values intact. | |
| Reflections on Mentorship, Representation, and Scale | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | The episode concludes with reflections on luck versus execution, Veronica's desire to mentor other women of color in CPG, and Guy Raz's closing business milestones. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Veronica Garza: Diagnosed with autoimmune condition ITP at age 17
“It turned out that My platelet counts were just extremely low, and they couldn't figure out why, so the diagnosis was an autoimmune condition called ITP.”
Garza: Adopting paleo diet eliminated chronic knee pain within four months
“We were doing squats, and I distinctly remember not feeling pain in my knees, and they used to be, like, very squeaky. Like, I could actually hear the squeak in my knees, and it wasn't there anymore. And that was probably, like, several months, maybe three or …”
Veronica Garza priced her first homemade grain-free tortillas at $12 per dozen
“I think at that time it was like a dollar a tortilla, so it was 12 dollars for a dozen.”
Miguel Garza: Siete Foods launched with under $2,000 in startup costs
“No, I actually think, so, Ziploc bags, not Ziploc, but like twist tie top bags, stickers for the label, like we went, As scrappy as possible. Yeah, it was probably maybe like under, just to get going, maybe under 2000.”
Garza: Siete sold out its initial retail batch within 24 hours
“So we had put these tortillas on the shelf in May of 2014 at Wheatsville, and we put two cases to the shelf, and we had learned a little bit from owning the gym on, like, marketing a service-based business, so what, you know, what we did was we took a picture,…”
Garza: Must B Nutty became Wheatsville's #1 refrigerated seller
“We had become the number one selling item in the entire refrigerated case.”
Siete Foods raised $1M from Austin angels and a Chicago broker
“Yeah, we raised a million dollars from a few angel investors here in town, and then a natural foods broker who's based out of Chicago.”
Garza: Never store tortillas in produce warehouses due to moisture and mold
“We had made one of the, a mistake, basically, which is don't store tortillas in a produce warehouse, because produce warehouses are humid, right? There's a lot of moisture, and produce has mold spores on it.”
Siete Foods expanded to four Whole Foods regions in January 2016
“They had their regional call, and four regions ended up being very excited about the product, and so January of 2016, we ended up launching in four regions.”
Garza: Fast brand-building is the only defense when innovative products get copied
“If you have an innovative product, it'll probably get copied, and, like, the only thing that you have to play defense against that is building a brand and running as fast as you can.”
Siete Foods was profitable and growing sustainably during 2016 retail expansion
“Yeah, yeah, because we were, at that point in time, we were making enough money to grow the business sustainably, and we were, we weren't making big bets beyond the innovation”
Garza: Siete Foods is in over 16,000 retailers including Costco and Target
“So we're now in A little over 16,000 retailers were in places like Kroger and Costco and Target and Walmart”