San Antonio entrepreneur Maria Flores knew her grandmother’s chorizo recipe was a step above others, but even she’s been surprised by its meteoric rise to success.
After launching her own small business in 2023 producing jars of her Abuela’s chorizo paste, Flores reached out to Launch SA, a business hub started by the city, to get help making her home trade into a true company.
Hess Street Foods was born, with Flores going on to win H-E-B’s Quest for Texas Best — and the $20,000 first-place prize — last summer.
Today, Flores’s three paste products are in 144 H-E-B stores statewide and in some specialty supermarkets such as Pullman’s Market at the Pearl. Flores said much of her early success is thanks to the help she received at Launch SA.
Speaking in front of about three dozen other local entrepreneurs on Wednesday inside Launch SA’s space at the San Antonio Central Library for San Antonio Startup Day, Flores was dressed in a casual tan jean jacket, donning her signature monarch butterfly pin on the lapel. Following her presentation, Flores was flooded by questions from other small business owners looking for advice.
“A lot of the mentors I met here just encouraged me, pushed me,” Flores said. “They said, ‘Hey, Maria, don’t let it sit. You’re living in momentum right now.’”
Launch SA has come a long way from its roots, launched more than a decade ago by the city as Café Commerce and formerly operated by LiftFund, a nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) and Community Development Corporation (CDC) that offers loans to high-risk businesses.
Geekdom took over the Launch SA contract in late 2023. Geekdom is a co-working space that aims to help local start-ups scale up. Launch SA then “relaunched” in October, celebrating the opening of its refurbished space in the San Antonio Central Library.
Six months later, Launch SA has ramped up its operations under its new executive director and former intern, Matthew Espinoza, hosting roughly 75 events per quarter.
Previously, it hosted about that many in a year, noted Mary Ullmann Japhet, a public relations specialist and spokeswoman for Launch SA.
Espinoza, a former Geekdom employee who served as its community and events manager, said he and the Geekdom team noticed there was a real thirst for more programming in San Antonio around starting or operating a small business, noting they’ve been trying to help fill that gap.
“One of the things we recognized, I think, is when you’re just getting started — a lot of the fundamentals are the same, but when you’re trying to launch a scalable startup versus operate and manage a small business, there’s a little bit of a different split in the resources and support you need,” Espinoza said.
A decade of growth
In 2012, then-mayor Julián Castro created a Small Business Task Force of business owners and advocacy organizations to help the city come up with a strategy for how to meet the community where it was.
The result was Café Commerce — developed as a partnership between the San Antonio Public Library, the City of San Antonio Economic Development Department and Acción Texas, which later became LiftFund.
The city invested $1.2 million in redesigning the organization’s 10,000 square-foot space on the San Antonio Central Library’s first floor, and issued a Request for Proposals for the operations of Café Commerce in May 2013, which was granted to Acción Texas. Café Commerce officially opened one month later.
In 2016, Café Commerce rebranded into Launch SA, with city leadership telling the San Antonio Report at the time its former name “confused potential users and attracted countless library-goers in search of food and beverages.”
LiftFund’s 10-year contract with the city expired in 2023, and the City of San Antonio awarded Geekdom a $1.7 million, three-year contract to take over operations of Launch SA.
LiftFund did not submit a proposal to renew its partnership, said Celeste Garcia, the marketing and communication manager for the city’s Economic Development Department, which works closely with LaunchSA.
“Managing Launch SA presented itself as an exciting opportunity for Geekdom as it aligned well with their expertise and commitment to grow San Antonio’s entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Garcia said.
Charles Woodin, chief executive officer of Geekdom, said the partnership between Geekdom and Launch SA seemed obvious. Since Geekdom helps start-ups launch, and Launch SA helps all small businesses in San Antonio who need help, it felt like a clear fit, he said.
“As we’re building the next generation of entrepreneurs and startups here, they’re running into some of the same issues that small businesses across the city are running into as well,” he said. “This partnership, this relationship with the city in particular, it really broadens that resource capability and brings both parties together to be seen through one lens.”
Making connections
Under Geekdom’s stewardship, Espinoza said he feels Launch SA has been able to ramp up its programming, which means more small businesses are able to get the resources or information they need.
“Our assistance process really steers what programs and events that we do,” he said. “So, we get a lot of people reaching out about starting their business. Access to capital is always a big , and then people just want to understand what general resources out there for business owners.”
Over the past year, Launch SA has met its objectives, laying the groundwork for a resilient small business ecosystem, Garcia said. Over the past fiscal year more than 1,000 entrepreneurs received help through the city’s assistance process.
Since October 2023, “Launch SA has hosted over 100 impactful events, with over 2,500 participants in attendance,” Garcia said in an emailed statement.
She added that access to capital has remained a major focus for Launch SA — with more than 30 entrepreneurs receiving connections to funding opportunities, and three securing a total of $60,000 in funding for their businesses over that same time period.
The city estimates that there have been about 56.5 hours of mentor and volunteer support provided through Launch SA over the past year, helping connect Launch SA’s success stories like Flores and her chorizo product to entrepreneurs just starting out.
“This city welcomed my grandparents, and now they’re welcoming me and my kids, and they’re making my dream a reality,” Flores said. “I have just such a big desire to give back.”
