“Community Futures helped me get this off the ground so that I could help so many people do what they love – cook and remember home, family or holidays or pick up snacks that remind them of their childhood or their last vacation and I can’t say thank you enough for the opportunity.”
Mary Pearson
Mary’s Mexican Shop
218 – 4750 Rutherford Road, Nanaimo
Phone: 236-544-TACO (8226)
Website: www.mexicanshop.ca
Salvador, my husband, moved to the island to live with me at the end of August 2021 and I assured him there were many places to purchase Mexican ingredients here on the island. He is originally from Guadalajara, Mexico. Every grocery store has an aisle labelled “Mexican” and there are a few places out of town that say they carry specialty foods. After more than a year of driving up and down the island looking for the ingredients, I realized I was mistaken. We went to the mainland to pick up ingredients. I realized that there was an entire section of the community who couldn’t easily access the foods they loved, needed or that reminded them of home. This is what set me on the path to opening a store.
Let me start off by saying, I have a full-time job and that I love working for the City of Nanaimo. My intention was never to have a second job, never mind a business. Sometimes, life just happens and for me, the more people I met from the Latin American Community who spoke of the foods they loved and missed, the more I realized that this was something that needed to happen.
I tried to approach local grocers to have them fill in the gap with little success. They just don’t have the time to deal with additional distributors. In the end, I realized that if you want to make a change, sometimes you have to just do it yourself. I didn’t have a lot to start with – really I didn’t have anything beyond a really good idea and the support of my family, especially my stepdad Brian.
I went into Community Futures and I was determined to have them see that it wasn’t just the Latin American community who needed this but also everyone who has ever wanted to cook something they’ve seen in a recipe book or online needed this. It worked. We’ve only been open since November 26, 2022. I opened with a store that was 272 square feet, no storage room and no heat, $25,000, a freezer that broke on my opening day, and only myself and my family as help. It is now the end of March, 2023. We moved and re-open on June 1, 2023 in Northtown Centre with more than double the square footage, a storage room, and all the amenities we didn’t have (including air conditioning, just in time for summer!). Our customers are loyal and follow us on Facebook, comment on all our posts, have made two commercials for free for us, and are so excited about the move from downtown Nanaimo.
Community Futures helped me get this off the ground so that I could help so many people do what they love – cook and remember home, family or holidays or pick up snacks that remind them of their childhood or their last vacation and I can’t say thank you enough for the opportunity.
