Patti Isolda Villa decided that her community of Fort Dodge needed a Mexican grocery store. To her it was more than just a store; it was an opportunity for her to provide additional business services to her community. Patti’s daughter, who was in high school at the time, convinced Patti that she needed more information before she got too far into business planning, so they both attended a Smart Start class offered by the North Central Iowa Small Business Development Center (SBDC) in Fort Dodge. After the class, Patti and her daughter stayed and spoke with a counselor for another hour, asking many questions. It was at that point that Patti realized she could make her store a reality.

Just deciding you want to start a business is not enough, however, nor does it pay any of the start-up costs. After the class, Patti went home and contacted her mother to see if she would want to be a partner in the store. Her mother has an accounting degree from Mexico and together they would make a great team. Patti realized she also needed to determine how much financing the store would need and where to get it from, so she and her mother worked with Lisa Shimkat of the North Central Iowa SBDC and, over the course of three months, designed a business plan and a course of action to obtain financing.

Patti received a loan for $50,000 from the Targeted Small Business Loan Program. Since they had already opened the store with minimal inventory, the additional financing enabled Patti and her mother to expand their inventory and increase their sales drastically.

One of the unique items that Patti has in her store is homemade Mexican corn. The second week she was open she had people calling her on the phone, asking her to open the store early because there was a line of 50 people outside waiting to pick up some Mexican corn!

Patti is enjoying her success and is grateful for the SBDC assistance she’s received and how the SBDC still continues to help her. She says, “Lisa and her office made the paperwork make sense. Filling out applications can be a scary process especially when many forms are not in Spanish. Lisa was able to walk us step by step through everything and showed us how to control our costs and maintain our cash flow. We were able to develop a plan to determine exactly how much we needed and Lisa showed us how to control our growth during our first year. The service we received was far greater than we ever expected.”

The Monterrey Mexican Store, located at 1214 Central Avenue in Fort Dodge, has a positive cash flow and Patti intends upon hiring additional employees by next summer. The store has increased its customer base every month it’s been open and Patti is excited about the store’s future plans, which include adding a travel agency and, by the end of the year, purchasing the building that the store occupies. Every day brings new challenges but Patti and her mother are looking forward to the future with a lot of excitement.