Alejandro was 17, had 12 dollars in his pocket and a refrigerator. Nothing else.
As a child, at his school in Barranquilla, he sold candy and soccer stickers between classes, and the teachers would take them away from him again and again. He asked the principal for permission to sell officially. They never gave it to him. But that stubbornness never left him over the years.
When he finished school, his grandmother gave him a piece of advice that changed everything: “Son, sell what sells the most, which is empanadas.” He was embarrassed to go out and sell on the street, until he found the phrase he repeats today as his motto: “Shame doesn’t make money.”
The first empanadas hardly sold at all — he made them Bogotá-style, and people there didn’t like them. He adjusted the recipe, knocked on doors at schools until one said yes, and little by little he landed contracts with 12 institutions and more than 1,000 empanadas a day. La Garosa was born, named with the initials of his own name. He convinced his father to leave his job to start a business together, and in the middle of the pandemic, he lost him to COVID-19. Today, at 25, he runs 3 locations and employs more than 80 people — and is already preparing to expand to the United States, Panama, and Mexico.
