Coni Reyes started making Filipino sausages in her kitchen when she couldn’t find any she liked in stores.
Her sausages helped her build a Filipino food company with more than $5 million in yearly sales.
Reyes and husband Rey Reyes own Anaheim-based Pampanga Foods Co.
Pampanga makes fresh and frozen Filipino meat products such as sausages, hot dogs, bacon and marinated beef, chicken and pork.
It makes frozen meat empanadas, egg rolls and pork rinds. It also sells frozen cow blood, pig blood and cow bile, ingredients used in Filipino stews.
The company’s products are branded under the Pampanga, Cabalen, Sarap Pinoy, Ling Nam, Newton, El Ray and Mr. Swifts brands.
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Pampanga HQ, van: company has 60 workers |
Pampanga also makes meat products for other food companies.
The company buys ingredients from local vendors. It processes, cooks, packages and freezes its food in two 11,000-square-foot buildings.
Distributors sell Pam-panga’s products in America, Guam and the Pacific island of Saipan.
The products are used at restaurants and sold at Filipino and Asian grocery stores such as City of Industry-based Island Pacific Supermarket’s stores and Buena Park-based Tawa Supermarkets Inc.’s 99 Ranch Market stores.
The company also sells to military commissaries in California, Virginia and Washington.
Competitors include Walnut-based Martin Purefoods Corp. and Ramar Foods International of Northern California.
The Reyeses came to the U.S. from the Philippines in the late 1960s.
Coni Reyes was an accountant before the couple started Pampanga in 1984. Rey Reyes worked as a recruiter for the Navy.
They never planned to start a food company. It just sort of happened, according to Coni Reyes.
Reyes said she always liked to cook and especially liked making Filipino sausages, which are sweeter than American sausages.
The ones from local Filipino grocery stores didn’t have the right flavor combinations or textures, she said.
“I could never find the quality that I was looking for or the taste, so I just started making my own,” Reyes said.
She said she made sausages for family and friends. Eventually word got out and Filipinos started buying sausages from her.
Reyes decided to start a part-time catering company as demand for her sausages grew, she said. It got harder for her to balance her accounting career with her catering business, she said.
She decided to quit her job when she became pregnant with her son Anthony.
Reyes wanted to have more time to focus on her role as a mom, she said. She thought her catering business would let her spend more time at home with her family.
The idea of being her own boss also appealed to her, Reyes said. She didn’t want to work around someone else’s schedule, she said.
“I always thought it would be a nice idea to be an entrepreneur but I never really thought about it seriously until I started catering,” she said. “The business kept growing and I realized how much I liked being the boss.”
More orders came in. Reyes said she didn’t have enough space in her kitchen or garage to handle all of them.
She rented a 3,000-square-foot building in Stanton and bought meat-processing equipment so she could handle more orders, Reyes said.
In the beginning, husband Rey helped her buy and mix ingredients. Her father Adolfo handled the orders. Her mother Lucing helped make sausages.
The company now has 60 workers, one refrigerated truck and a van.
Pampanga outgrew two other spots before it settled in Anaheim in 1992.
Reyes said she’s had offers to be bought, but none were good enough to be considered. She’s even made an offer to buy a local rival but said the company’s price was too high.
Finding workers is the biggest hurdle facing the company, according to Reyes. Pampanga uses employment agencies to find people to work for the processing side of the business, she said.
“It’s really hard finding workers … ones who you can rely on to do their job,” Reyes said.
The company also has to deal with a monster product menu. It makes about 90 products. Some are profitable, others not so much, Reyes said.
Pampanga needs to streamline its product lines to become more profitable, said Hector Mariano, the company’s marketing director.
“It’s just more cost effective and efficient for us to make less products,” he said.
Another way the company is trying to be more profitable is to grow its private label business.
The company is targeting Hispanic food companies since they process similar meat products, Mariano said. That could help Pampanga grow sales by 15% to 20% a year in the next five years, he said.
Vegetable Powered
Irvine-based RebelDiesel hopes to hit more than $1 million in yearly sales by making biodiesel fuel out of waste vegetable oil.
It’s one of a handful of local biodiesel companies, including competitors Southern California Biofuel in Anaheim and West Coast Biofuels Inc. in Newport Beach.
Brett Buchanan started RebelDiesel earlier this year.
Buchanan said he started making biodiesel because he wanted to find an eco-friendly yet cost effective way to help break reliance on foreign oil.
“I’m rebelling against big oil,” he said. “I’m trying to show people that there is an efficient way to break our dependence.”
RebelDiesel buys waste vegetable oil from restaurants, hotels and food companies and processes it into biodiesel fuel.
The company also produces glycerin as a byproduct and sells it to soap companies.
The biodiesel sells for $2.99 per gallon for individual buyers. Prices for truck fleets vary, he said.
RebelDiesel’s fuel can be used for all cars, trucks and machines with engines that have been broken in, Buchanan said.
Eau de Toilet
Courtesy Flush Inc. is bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase eau de toilet.
The Laguna Beach-based company makes Courtesy Flush, a liquid toilet deodorizer.
Courtesy Flush comes in half-ounce bottles that hold about 500 drops of liquid.
When dropped into a toilet before use, Courtesy Flush creates a thin film along the water that traps odors. It’s made with bamboo and tealeaf extracts, which are said to neutralize odors.
Cofounder Lance Stuart calls his product a “secret weapon.”
“It’s small and discreet so people can use it and do their business without anyone even noticing,” he said.
Stuart and Greg Williams started the company earlier this year.
A popular Japanese toilet deodorizer inspired their product, Stuart said.
Stuart admits that Courtesy Flush is a bit, well, funky. He said the company’s biggest challenge will be marketing.
“It’s going to be challenging getting consumers to take this product seriously,” he said. “But it works and we’re hoping that they realize that and feel comfortable buying it.”
Courtesy Flush could become a popular item for people that are insecure about using public restrooms, Stuart said.
A small package and quick results are selling points, he said.
Courtesy Flush is made and packaged at a factory in Florida. It’s distributed by Thomasville, Ga.-based Scentco LLC.
It sells for $5 and is set to be at all of Walnut Creek-based Longs Drugs’ stores in August. It also will be test marketed at Wal-Mart stores in Minnesota and Wisconsin and at some Bed, Bath & Beyond stores, Stuart said.
