Eladia Ayala has had an affinity for food since she was a young girl in Mexico in the 1970s. She started cooking early, having closely watched her mother create dishes like tamales and tacos and whip up frozen sweets.
Eventually, she sold her own creations at her town’s central market on Saturdays. During the week, she butchered chickens and sold them door to door.
Ayala came to the United States when she was 18 and moved to Houston, Texas, when she was about 21. She began working at a local meat market and met her future husband. They had five children – three girls and two boys. Continuing the entrepreneurial spirit she had developed in her early years, Ayala bought a van and started selling produce in their Houston neighborhood in 1995.
One of her husband’s co-workers and his wife offered them a loan to buy a storefront, a 2,000-square-foot space in north Houston.
They bought the store, and the business began to grow organically, blooming into 13 locations by 2013. When the couple divorced, she got three locations; he got 10.
Since then, Ayala has grown her three stores back to 10, with an 11th on the way, according to Estefania Ayala, one of Eladia’s three daughters and company VP. The company operates nine Teloloapan Meat Markets in and around Houston and one Telomarket store, which was partially funded by a grant from the City of Houston. Their holdings also include two Teloliquor stores.
Eladia Ayala is CEO, and her other two daughters also are part of the executive team: Jennifer Ayala, director of operations, and Alondra Ayala, who graduated from college in December and took over as director of marketing. (Of the two sons, one is not involved in the grocery business; the other manages Houston-area grocery wholesaler ERA Distribution, a supplier to Teloloapan Meat Market.)
Not only is Teloloapan Meat Market a woman-run and woman-owned company, but nine out of 10 of its store managers are women as well, according to Estefania Ayala, who worked with her mother in the stores while she was growing up. She said her mother is a big reason for the success and direction of the stores.
“One of the things driving us is keeping our traditions alive, our flavors alive, but our mom was also really open to innovating our stores,” Estefania said.
“We’ve really worked hard, my sisters and I, to continue her legacy and make the stores better. We want to keep our traditions alive but also add innovation to it. That’s what we’re focusing on as we continue to grow the business. She also instilled in us hard work and dedication and always giving back to our customers.”
Strategic locations
One of the ways the company – which is celebrating 30 years in business this year – gives back is by opening stores in food desert or food desert-adjacent areas of Houston.
“We like to focus in those areas where the big-box store will not go,” Estefania said. “We like to take opportunities in communities that are up-and-coming and have those food deserts.”
The stores range from 5,000 to 15,000 square feet.
“Our sweet spot is anywhere between 10,000- to 12,000-square-foot stores,” Estefania said. “We like our customers to find a little bit of everything but to be able to come in and out as quickly as they can.”
The 15,000-square-foot location is the Telomarket store that the company built from the ground up with financial assistance from the City of Houston. A city grant funded the equipment inside the store, which opened in 2021 at 5702 Lyons Ave. The store was in progress when the pandemic struck in March 2020.
“The Lyons location is in a food desert, and we were really excited because … we’re able to offer fresh produce, fresh meat with really good quality for a good price. The community seems to be liking our store,” Estefania said.
The city asked for a more neutral name on the store, so they went with Telomarket, a shortened version of their primary store name. The color scheme also is toned down. Instead of green, red and yellow, the color palette includes orange and light blue. But the product offerings are very similar to Teloloapan, she added.
Teloloapan also opened a new store on Bellaire Boulevard in Houston and has remodeled two other stores completely so that they are practically new, Estefania said.
“We hope to continue opening in other food deserts as well,” she added.
At the time of the interview in April, the company was in the process of signing the lease for store No. 11.
“We’re really excited about this location. We would have to remodel a bit of it, but we are in the middle of finalizing the details to sign the lease for this location in the next couple months, or even sooner,” she said.
Meats, prepared foods stand out
As its name would suggest, Teloloapan Meat Market has developed a reputation as a go-to store for meat.
The meat department, or Carnicería, is one of the largest departments in each of the stores, Estefania said, with a focus on selling “specialty cut meat at a reasonable price.
“Our customers really do come for our meat quality,” she said. “They come in and they want a meat cut in a certain way. We’re able to do that because we buy whole cows and whole pigs from a local vendor and can cut to order for the customer.”
Other specialties include a variety of marinated meats, including cuts used for fajitas.
Even with the economic challenges in recent years, the company’s shoppers for the most part are “still sticking to what they like to eat,” Estefania said. “But we do see some changes, like instead of taking beef ribs, they take pork ribs. But not a huge difference.”
The next most popular department is the kitchen, or taqueria, where customers can find ready-to-eat food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Breakfast tacos are a popular choice in the morning.
“I know it’s our stores, but everything is made really fresh; it’s homemade. We do really good food,” she said. “And we have handmade tortillas and tamales and two soups a day, and we have barbacoa carnitas.”
The taqueria is open 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.; the store itself stays open just two hours longer, until 10 p.m.
The produce (Frutas y Verduras) department and bakery (Panadería) are also customer draws, Estefania added.
“You cannot be on a diet around here,” she said, referring to the pleasing aromas that permeate the store.
The stores cater to Latin shoppers, but mainstream shoppers also visit, “even for our taqueria and our meat department,” she said.
Healthy boundaries
The four women at the helm of Teloloapan Meat Market use their skills to make it all work.
Eladia, as noted, leads as CEO.
Jenny, the eldest sister, is in charge of store operations, including the front end.
Estefania, the middle sister, handles back-office, accounting, HR, legal – “everything behind the scenes to run the store,” she said.
Alondra, the youngest, took over marketing a few months ago.
“Family businesses are interesting; every day is different,” Estefania said. “But I think we have really good communication, and I think we work really well together. I’m excited to be working together with them to continue growing the company. There’s ups and downs; it’s hard. It’s all about having good boundaries.”
The second-generation leadership has been instrumental in bringing the company up to date with its POS, accounting and HR programs. The company took off quickly after the Ayalas bought their first store, and there was no time to focus on those things, Estefania said.
“We’ve come in and changed the company in a lot of ways and innovated a lot of systems to be more up to date. I think that’s one of the reasons why we haven’t grown as fast as we’d like, because we were so busy focusing on [updating systems]. Now that we have good systems in place, we’re excited to continue growing and grow at a faster rate.”
Social media has played a role in Teloloapan’s planning over the last 12 years.
“A lot of our customers are like, ‘please come out to Katy’ or ‘please open in Porter,’ ‘please come over here.’ We start scoping that area and looking at demographics. That’s how we came about our last two locations – just kind of seeing opportunities come and if they match” the company’s plans.
The presumed store 11, in Porter, housed a grocery store in the 1960s. It has been empty for a while, but “it’s funny that now, so many years later, a grocery store is coming back,” Estefania said.
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