Women business owners lead growth ---  

Women-owned businesses across the U.S. continue to grow in number and economic stature, and Bay Area businesses reflect this national trend. According to the annual State of Women-Owned Businesses report, women-owned businesses are competing strongly in industries such as construction and transportation, where women-owned companies are just as likely as all others to generate more than half a million dollars in annual sales.

The fastest growth in the number of women-owned businesses during the past ten years has been in education services (up 94%), health care and social assistance (up 55%), and arts, entertainment and recreation (35%). In other industries, women also continue to grow their businesses.

“We started with a very small store in Newark many years ago,” said Guadalupe Lopez, owner of Arteaga’s Food Center, a chain of supermarkets in the Bay Area that caters mainly to the Hispanic market. When Lopez opened her first store she employed only four people - today Arteaga’s employs more than 200 people.

Lopez credits the growth of the company to their involvement and connection with the community. “We are a company that engages with the community and we are always participating,” states Lopez. “We are part of the community and the community is part of the store, we work together. That brings you the loyalty of your local customers.”

According to the report, the growth in the number (up 54%), employment (up 9%) and revenues (up 58%) of women-owned companies over the past 15 years exceeds the growth rates of all but the largest, publicly-traded companies.   

“We just bought a building in San Jose and we will open another store next year, which will be the sixth,” says Lopez. “The store will create 20 to 25 jobs.”

It is estimated that there are more than 8.3 million women-owned businesses in the United States, generating nearly $1.3 trillion in revenues and employing nearly 7.7 million people. California is home to the greatest number of women-owned firms in the country.

Tina ‘tamale’ Ramos, 43, is the most public face of the popular La Borinqueña Mexicatessen restaurant in downtown Oakland. Her grandmother started the business as a small grocery in 1944. She bought the store on credit and her husband and kids worked at the store. Tina’s mom started working at the store when she was twelve.  

“My grandmother was from Atemajac de Jalisco, Mexico, and she had very limited English skills,” says Ramos, who clearly has a strong admiration for her grandmother’s strength and vision.

“Years later, the freeway development moved through west downtown Oakland, breaking up the Latino neighborhood,” explains Ramos.

People in the neighborhood would ask Tina’s mom to cook tamales or other food for them, which led to the beginning of the restaurant.

Tina started working for the restaurant when she was nine years old. “When I was in my twenties, I realized that being ‘the tamale girl’ was my destiny,” she says.

Today the family still uses fresh masa for the tamales and they grind the corn at the restaurant, which attracts a customer base as diverse as Oakland itself.

“We are really proud of doing things the way my grandmother did,” says Tina. “We are still making tamales with my grandmother’s recipe - it is important that we do not lose the traditional recipes.”

The restaurant has a staff of about ten people. Christmas week is usually their busiest time of the year – they sell about twelve thousand tamales in that week. The family also caters corporate events and conferences, as well as big community events like the Oakland Museum’s Day of the Dead festival.

Regardless of gender or race, business owners need to be very resourceful to compete in today’s economy.

Explaining how she handles the business in hard economic times, Lopez says, “The opportunities just appear and you have to think out of the box and use different ideas. At this moment you have to work harder and help the economy to move.”

She adds that customer service is key. “You have to know the needs of your clients and their challenges so you can help them.”