OUR STORY

Hello my name is Javier Casas I am the owner of Don Javier’s Salsa, I graduated high school in Mexico, I was taught business from the best teacher my father.

I was born and raised in Mexico. My father was a businessman and that’s what I learned. We had a grocery store, a tortilla factory, and a large farm. We delivered tons of animal feed to the local farmers. I was the manager for our deliveries to the farmers, I had 10 employees. I opened my own grocery store at the age of 17 in Mexico, but that wasn’t enough for me I wanted to start something on my own.

I decided to come to the USA to see if the sky was a different color, well that’s what I was told and to find new opportunities on my own. I was in the states for 1 year and my intention was not to stay but I met my wife, and I wasn’t going to let her go.

My wife Gabby and I have 4 wonderful children 2 boys and 2 girls, they help with the business on their time off. They are involved in sports, boxing, track, basketball, and soccer. Both our boys have gone to compete statewide for track 2 years in a row!

In 2004 was our first venture, my wife and I opened a restaurant EL AMIGO CASAS in LaSalle, we did very well we were able to start living the American dream. While the restaurant was open, we had block parties for Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day. We worked with our high school LP, for fundraisers we had the LP band and the Cavalettescome out and perform for us. We had live music, food, beer garden, piñatas, and jumpy jumps. It was a great way to give back to our community.

We’ve always made our children part of the business they help quite a bit from dish washing, sweeping, mopping, waitressing, hosting, and now production lines.

In February of 2013 we started selling our restaurant salsa at our local grocery stores and that took off, by the end of the year we were in 20 stores. In October of 2013 we closed the restaurant due to the high demand for the salsa.

Currently we are in 70+ stores and have a few distributors.  We are in Hy-Vee, Schnucks, Woodman’s, and Sullivans in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

Being in business has been a blessing for our family, our children have learned a little bit of what I learned when I was growing up. Like my father said, “the best inheritance you can leave your children is showing them how to work”.