Last year, we celebrated the 10 Year Anniversary of our Latino program. We organized a community event that featured eight Latino businesses. One of the businesses that catered that evening was La Malquerida, owned by Rafael Alarcon Bello. Rafael gave us a letter the night of the event that we’re sharing with you.
“Good evening, I would like to say thank you to Ventures for thinking of us for this special event tonight. My name is Rafael Alarcon Bello, and next to me is my partner and also my brother, also called Rafael. I am going to tell a little story about us and how our business started in the first place.
We are from Veracruz, Mexico and where we are from there is a lot of culinary art. My brother and I grew up together, along with our family, and they were in the culinary field. We came from Mexico over two decades ago, and started working at restaurants here in Seattle. We also went to Alaska to be part of the cooking staff on the fishing boats. And also worked together at Cold Storage in Seattle in Pier 91 for over 15 years.
We have always been surrounded by people telling us to start a business in the culinary field. We never have had the opportunity to start this business because we didn’t have knowledge of how to start it on our own. But one day, we had a get together at my house, and an aunt on my wife’s side of the family brought a guest. As the evening went on, I sat down to hear one of the conversations that were taking place at the table and heard that she wanted to open a business. She was attending classes that supported small businesses! I asked her where this was taking place and to give me contact information to communicate with someone because I was very interested. This is how I discovered Ventures and I met Amy. (Amy is like an angel to me) I had the opportunity to assist three classes with Ventures and one of them was eight weeks with Amy. This was one of the first steps to starting our catering business, La Malquerida.
Ventures is an organization that has supported me from the start and have taken the time to perfect and teach us how to operate a business. I would like to thank especially Amy Hollander and Laura Gómez because they have been my mentors and my guides and have took the time to make sure that I have all of the support that I need for our business and to be successful. Thank you, Ventures! Laura Gómez has been one of the people that have guided me on the correct path and has helped me learn how to prepare our food before any event.
This is how my brother and I started on a new adventure with our business, La Malquerida, we offer authentic family recipes. Our primary goal is to bring a little bit of Mexico to your dinner table. La Malquerida opened its doors on July 21, 2018 which was four months ago. Since then we have participated and two festivals, four private events, two events for Amazon, and Ventures’ Programa Latino 10th Anniversary. I would like to thank again to Ventures because without the support and professionalism my dreams would not have come true. I will always thank Ventures and recommend them as a great school because they support businesses started by Latinos.
Thanks, Ventures!
Rafael Alarcon Bello”
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