East Bay Immigrant Women Get Business Boost
July 23, 2008
Matt O’Brien–Contra Costa Times
OAKLAND — Dilsa Lugo learned how to cook masterfully in her Mexican hometown of Cuernavaca, but starting her own Bay Area food business was another kind of challenge.
She knew little English and had a young child to raise. In her spare time, she steamed 200 tamales a week in her West Berkeley home, selling most of them to her husband’s co-workers in construction.
If she stopped there, Lugo would be another of countless immigrants finding small ways to patch up household incomes in an informal economy. But Lugo took her business dreams a step further, enrolling in English and entrepreneurial classes, discovering a licensed community kitchen and, this week, obtaining a small cash grant to help grow her budding catering business.
"I did a lot of research about who was going to be my target customer," Lugo said. "The thing is, I don’t have transportation. So, all the food I make, I can only make for 40 or 50 people because I don’t have a truck or something bigger."
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