El Salvador-born Carlos Castro crossed the border to the United States to chase his dream and escape the dangers of his country of origin. Once he learned English and obtained his citizenship, he founded a business that now employs more than 200 people. Tune in to learn how he’s given back and become a community leader.
Transcript
Denzil Mohammed: I’m Denzil Mohammed, and this is JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: What do you know about migrants who cross the southern border, and where they go in life if their journey is successful? Do you know what they’re fleeing? What skills they may have? What their dreams are? What motivated them to take such a dangerous risk? For Carlos Castro, President and CEO of Todos Supermarket in Woodbridge, Virginia, it was decapitated heads lined up on fences. It was a civil war. It was virtually no economic opportunity in El Salvador. Carlos took a huge risk as a young man to cross the border without authorization. But in that dangerous journey was a determination to support his family and find them safety, as any husband and father would. Carlos, who became a U.S. citizen in 1990, is now a business and community leader in Northern Virginia, employing more than 200 people. He explains some of the things Americans find perplexing, like why do migrants cross the border, why immigrant business owners tend to hire people like them, and what life is really like in the hellish countries where desperate migrants come from, in this week’s JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: Carlos Castro, welcome to the JobMakers podcast. How are you?
Carlos Castro: Very good. Thank you for the invitation.
Denzil Mohammed: So you are founder, president and CEO of Todos Supermarket in Woodbridge, Virginia. Describe your business for us. When did it launch and where is it today?
Carlos Castro: I was at a party for a friend of mine, and she came to me and she said, “Look, there is a need for a grocery store here. Why don’t you start one?” And I go like, “Why me?” [laughs]. You know, I don’t know anything about grocery stores. But a year later, I was talking with some friends about starting a business, we went through many, many ideas, and then I remembered what my friend told me, and we decided to open Todos Supermarket because it was only a tiny Mexican store, like 500 square feet. It was very, very small. And we took 2,500 square feet. It was very, very small. But we didn’t know how to negotiate contract, we just went and signed for whatever they offered me. So then my wife was running it. The idea was that my wife was a maid, a house cleaner, and that she could have her own business and I would have my own business, and that’s how we started in 1990. And after I realized that actually I was not doing very good in construction because I was most of the time on the phone with my wife, trying to resolve issues and figure out why we were not selling. Then I decided to give up my construction business in D.C. and come to the store, help my wife. The problem is that she did not have money to pay me a salary, she barely paid herself a salary. So I became a tax preparer, and by being a tax preparer I realized that people were not taking advantage of home ownership, so I became a realtor and I was working out of the store. It was very difficult years. But we start to ask the customers, “What would you like us to have?” every day since day one, and that’s how we actually became to know that even though we speak Spanish, even though we’re Latinos and everybody thinks we are all Mexican, it’s just not that way. Bolivians have their food, Colombians, Peruvians, you name it. So it was a exciting learning and very difficult time, but the beauty of it is that in some countries, the owners of the businesses are considered very smart people that you can go and get advice. People would come to my store and ask for things, and then my wife would tell them, “Come back at six, my husband is gonna be here.” And then by the time I got to the store, I had a line of people that had something to ask and it felt really good, and it create that kind of loyalty in our community. That went on for five years. Then we decided to move to 5,000 square feet in five years. And then another five years, we moved to 10,000 and then to 18,000. By the time we were in 2010, we actually got into this one location at Marumsco Plaza in Woodbridge that has a total of 75,000 square feet, with offices and headquarters and everything. Had like 180 employees, we still have 180, some of them have left, and we have hired new people. My attitude has been always that we hire for attitude. You get the right attitude, I can teach you the business. So my general manager, I found her flipping hamburgers at the McDonald’s nearby, and she actually took the offer the same day I put it to her. She’s now my general manager. And her case has repeated over and over. But my father, he was always helping. He was a builder, and he always was observing people. I was a kid always with him, I was his first child, so he was always looking at people and giving the opportunity. So Todos Supermarket have done the same. We give other people opportunity. When we bring new people to the team, nobody gets to worry because we don’t compete, we complement each other.
Denzil Mohammed: Giving people opportunity is key, especially recently arrived immigrants. They just want a crack and they want a break. And they’re able to develop their skills from flipping hamburgers to becoming general manager of a massive 75,000 square foot store, I mean that’s pretty incredible. And you mentioned your father and growing up, obviously you didn’t grow up in Northern Virginia, you grew up in El Salvador. Most listeners will have no idea what life is like in a place like El Salvador. Paint a picture for us. What was it like growing up?
Carlos Castro: We were very poor. My father built his house in the capital with salvage materials, pieces of metal. We laugh all the time because I told him that we had the biggest window in the living room. The only problem is that it didn’t have any glass to hold, you know [laughs]. And we used to go and we closed our door and we put like a big piece of pipe to keep it locked. And then of course you lock the door and then the window is open where you can run a truck through it [laughs]. So it was funny. We didn’t have any running water or indoor plumbing. My father kept reminding us what we needed to do to really survive and reminding us that we didn’t have any inheritance to receive, that all we had was an able body and a good head on them, and that we have to do our best. One thing that happened during those days is that, good jobs were reserved for people that were friends of the owners of the company or a boss in the company, and poor people like me didn’t have any chance. I worked with my dad the first few years, and I moved to work at a factory, but to get a 25 cent salary increase in a year, we almost had to go into a strike. It was like that. But I enjoyed what I did and luckily I was able to climb the ladder at a very young age. I was supervising people by the time I was 19, and I was supervising a production plant of a big factory when I was studying industrial engineering on my first year, and I was only like 20 years old. And I was happy.
Denzil Mohammed: You were all set. Why did you need to move?
Carlos Castro: Yeah, exactly. Then we had a civil war going on really bad. That was the military against the left–wing activists from Cuba and Nicaragua, and it become a terrible civil war. You found people decapitated with the hair stuck on the fences. It was horrifying. And me being the eldest of my siblings, I had the opportunity that some of my middle school classmates gave me to come to the U.S., of course illegally because we had no chance of getting a visa. So I thought really quick because he asked the question on me, “Why don’t you go to the U.S., work for a couple of years, learn English, and maybe by then the war will be over, and then you can provide for your siblings and your mom and your dad?” I had a job there in the unions and the guerrillas were taking over and shutting down the factories. As a matter of fact, the factory where I worked, it was actually one of three that were still open. So I thought, “This is gonna collapse any minute,” and I took that opportunity. I came with a coyote, a smuggler, and I got caught across the border, so I got deported. After I spent a month and a half in detention, I got to El Salvador at midnight when they dropped me there, and then I hid for a week and then got more money. I found my motorcycle and I headed back with a cousin, and we went across Mexico and across the border. Luckily we made it and that’s how I’m here. The first year, all I did was save money to buy my ticket back to El Salvador [laughs] because I wasn’t really enjoying. My wife was in El Salvador with my little kid that was one year old when I left, so all I wanted is to get back to El Salvador. But then I got the opportunity of working in construction, and I was really good. I am really good in construction, I love it. I enjoyed since I was a little kid. So that was my ticket to success. I was able to save for my house, and then I moved on to set up my own company with the customers that my boss couldn’t serve, he would give them to me, so he helped me. Actually, he signed our job certification for my wife, and then by my wife getting her visa, my kid and myself could get a visa. So actually she came a year after I was here. I brought her in through the border, she got caught, she was in jail, but we were able to get her out of jail through an organization and into here. And that’s how she came to work for the architect, my boss, and I asked him and he agreed to sign our papers.
Denzil Mohammed: With things being so terrible, and during a civil war in your country, and as you said, decapitated heads in the streets, it’s something that we here in the U.S. can’t even fathom, it’s something so distant to us. And yet that was your daily reality. Who would not want to escape something like that? I will bring it to the present day where you went from 1,000 square feet to 75,000 square feet with Todos Supermarket in Woodbridge, Virginia. You basically realized that there was a food desert for recent migrants to that area and ended up taking over the giant supermarket, what we in Boston here call Stop & Shop. You’re involved in several initiatives in your community, and one of them is helping a nonprofit called the Hispanic Organization for Leadership and Action, or HOLA, which works to engage and empower the Latino community. Describe your work with HOLA. Why is it important and what benefits have you seen arise from it?
Carlos Castro: Well, HOLA was created like 20 years ago by a visionary chairman of the board, Sean Connaughton, here in Prince William County. He saw the need because of the growth of the community. He said, “You need to have an organization.” Basically our idea is to develop leadership, to get people into the community, to participate, to be part of the mainstream community little by little. So we have focused our effort in being a center of information, and bringing information to the community by creating events where the community show up and the agencies that are in the county show up. And then we talk about everything that is at their disposal in the county or state government. We want to focus in leadership development. We want to make sure that we create resilient communities that are self–dependent, that are not dependent of other organizations or the government, but actually on their own, you know, basically leaders.
Denzil Mohammed: So the result of that has been recently–arrived or almost recently–arrived migrants to the area being part of building up the community by taking on these leadership roles. It brings me to a point that is a sticking point for a lot of U.S.-born people. I read a recent article, well from 2017, that mentioned 90 percent of your employees are Hispanic. Respond to questions about why you and other business owners tend to hire people of similar ethnic background. Does that tie into what you were just talking about, building up resiliency, meaningful job opportunities and that kind of thing?
Carlos Castro: Generally, you want to have people to work for you that you trust, and the people from your country are the first people that you trust, whether it’s a relative or friend or somebody, and it takes a while to build a business. So that’s how we ended up hiring people that speak Spanish. But the other problem that we have as immigrant companies, or what do you call it, international companies or ethnic companies, let’s say regular Americans or people from other groups that are not used to work with Latinos, they don’t see their future in any company. Let me give you an example. Once I hired the daughter of one of my customers as my personal assistant, and she was asked, “Why would you go to work there? Why don’t you go to another American company that you have a better future?” And at some point I ran a campaign. I thought in order for me to grow, I need to attract more people, or different groups. So I ran a campaign to hire managers, and I had a good response of people. By the time we set up the first interview, it was kind of sad to see that people park their car, go around, look into the store, walk around the store and then walk back out. At that point, I realized I’m not gonna attract American people to work for me. I mean, we’re a stinky little grocery store, what do I think? And then I decided I’m gonna put my efforts to make sure that my people get the opportunity.
Denzil Mohammed: That is so interesting. And I don’t think any U.S.-born person would be thinking like that. Would an American want to go to work for the Hispanic grocery store out there in Woodbridge? What do they know about oxtail, for instance? What do they know about halal meat? That is really interesting, so thank you for shedding light on that as an immigrant and minority business owner. That was really great.
Carlos Castro: Thank you.
Denzil Mohammed: You mentioned your father earlier, and it’s clear he’s had a very profound impact on your life as not just a business owner, but as a man. What has been the influence of him on your work? I know from previous interactions with you, you mentioned he was very strict, but he also had a set of principles and values, right?
Carlos Castro: Yes. You know, that’s pretty much it, it’s about principles and values. My father didn’t have the opportunity to go to school. He actually rebelled against my grandparents because he was the son of the maid, so he wasn’t really part of the family, and they wouldn’t give him the opportunity to go to school. So he left the house when he was probably 12, and then he met people along the way, because he was very charismatic, and he made some good friends and people taught him. He was a genius in a way. He learned to be a builder and he never went to 12th grade. Actually he finished 12th grade when he was married to my mom, and he was like 40 some years [old]. And I enjoyed so much, his boss was probably a young architect or a young engineer, and when they told me, “Whatever I know, I know it because your father. I went to school, I have a lot of knowledge, but I don’t know how to do these things, and he taught me.” And so he was very good at that, particularly in the structures. He study at night and he kind of look at everything. He was able to go through a set of blueprints and have a list of all the errors that were in those blueprints and give it to the architect, “We need to fix it.” And like I said, he was a perfectionist, so he demanded from us kind of the same thing that he demanded from himself.
Denzil Mohammed: I’m so happy that you came here to the U.S., as you say, with a coyote, illegally. Detained, deported, came back. You had that persistence and that led to you being able to have the opportunity that you obviously did not have in El Salvador at the time, to be able to put your hard work to use and let it result in something. And it resulted in dishwashing, and janitorial, and then construction, then owning your own construction company, then owning your first small supermarket. And now Todos is a giant, let’s put it that way. What are your views on the United States as a home for immigrants?
Carlos Castro: It’s a place that I dream about. I didn’t think that the [inaudible] where you get a shovel and you shovel dollars into your pocket, but I thought that it was a place where there is good people that can help you succeed. And that has been my experience. People helped me along the way. I was not asking a lot of the time that people came to my rescue. Very good–hearted people in America, and I think we need to keep that spirit. As new immigrants, we need to help others to achieve their dreams, so that we give others the opportunities that were given to us. For immigrants right now it’s very difficult. As we all know, there is people driving their cars into a crowd, or just shooting somebody or hating you for no reason. I think as immigrants, we have the obligation to make sure that we get enculturated with the rest of the community that live around us. I think it’s still the best place on earth if you want to actually succeed, if you want to make something about yourself. As long as you don’t find anything to come up with excuses. Excuses are not allowed if you want to succeed in the U.S.
Denzil Mohammed: JobMakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship, contributions and research produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and The Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Got comments, questions, know someone we should talk to? Email denzil [at] jobmakerspodcast.org. Thanks for joining us for this week’s incredible story of one immigrant’s resilience, success and contribution. Next Thursday at noon, we talk with Jeff Farrah, General Counsel for the National Venture Capital Association, about why immigrants and JobMakers like Carlos have virtually no avenue of migrating or remaining in the U.S., an outdated but fixable immigration system that doesn’t adequately serve America’s needs. I’m Denzil Mohammed, and thank you for listening to JobMakers.