It’s just been a few months since Miguel González stepped away from day-to-day operations at Northgate González Market, with his brother, Jesús, succeeding him as co-president.
“Jesús is smart, and he is a very hard worker and knows a lot about the business,” Miguel said. “It was my recommendation to approve Jesús as the new co-president. The brothers agreed, and now he’s leading with Oscar.”
Miguel actually stayed in the role five more years than he intended. In 2020, he had felt it was time to retire, but world events changed his plans.
“At 70, I said I wanted to do other things,” he said. “But then the pandemic came, and I stayed another five years. At 75, I said, ‘It is time for me to do something else.’”
His plans for retirement are simple.
“My hobby has always been horses,” he said. “If I can ride a horse, I feel young. Thank God for this great country that allowed us to fulfill our American dream.”
We’ve come a long way
When Miguel, the family’s third-born son who was named after his father Don Miguel, looks back on the beginnings of Northgate González Market, he remembers a time defined by scarcity, risk and faith.
“The first store, the only money I had was a check for $240 that the previous owner of the store cashed for us,” he said. “That tells you how much we knew about grocery stores – we had no cash to start the till.”
But González’s story begins decades earlier, in Mexico City, where his father struggled to find work.
“My father was promised a job in Mexico City from one of his friends,” Miguel recalled. “After five-and-a-half months, he came and said, ‘You know what, our savings is gone. We need to go to the U.S.’”
The family crossed the border in early 1968 and settled in California.
“We borrowed some money from relatives and bought the bus tickets to come into Tijuana,” he said. “It took us almost three days to get there.”
Years later, that same perseverance would carry over into the family’s first venture into retail.
A friend of his father’s told Miguel, “You know what? There’s a small store that has been in the market for a year, and they cut the price in half. You want to go see it?” he said. “We didn’t have any experience, but we went and looked at the store in Anaheim on Anaheim Boulevard, and we liked it.”
The setup was as basic as it gets.
“It was an old liquor store,” he said. “It had maybe three-foot-high shelves, one 12-foot meat counter, another 12-foot produce case and one electronic checkstand – plus one of those old ones where you punch the price and pull the handle.”
The early days were about survival.
“Everything was COD,” Miguel said. “The only credit we got was from the tortilla guy that said, ‘Anything that I leave today, you pay me tomorrow.’”
Still, the store earned loyalty.
“We didn’t have the best product or the best prices,” he said, “but the community kept coming back. It was mainly the good service we were providing. They wanted to help us because we reflected them.”
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Dream lives on
Based on their hard work, honesty and sacrifice, the American dream continues for the González family and Northgate González Market.
“What I see is that we are more united, more centered into what we want to do as a company. Choosing to really center on authentic Mexican food and products gives us an advantage in the business,” Miguel said. “That’s our center, because so many people love Mexican food, not only Mexican people.”
A researcher from UCLA confirmed to the Northgate team that what people are looking for today is authenticity.
“The main thing I kept from what he told us was that when somebody had a question about how to prepare Mexican food, if they had the chance, they were not going to call the mom or the grandmother – they were going to call the great-grandmother,” he said. “They want authentic. That told us that we need to focus on authentic Mexican food.”
As immigration from Mexico is close to zero now, Miguel acknowledged that the company will need to make sure its stores appeal to not just Mexican Americans but also to other ethnicities, he said.
That is already happening at the company’s Mercado format store in Costa Mesa, designed after a Mexican food market.
“Sometimes it’s like a United Nations. I see people from Asia eating the hot food, Anglo people, people from Europe love what we do,” he said.
Northgate appreciates all those who shop their stores and are careful to show that appreciation.
“When people come to the door, we don’t see colors; we just see the green dollars in their pocket,” Miguel said. “A customer is a customer, and they demand respect from us to treat them correctly.”
Responsibility to its team
That respect shown to customers also extends to team members, offering them opportunities for education and career growth, Miguel said.
For associates who don’t speak English, Northgate offers free classes, either online or live.
“They can learn the words they need” to interact with English-speaking customers.
Various other educational opportunities are open for those team members who want to take advantage of them.
In terms of career growth, Northgate strives to reward the employees who’ve grown with the company, whether members of the family or not.
“Some of them started as box boys and cashiers, then became department leaders, assistant store directors, store directors and later VPs,” he said. “It’s not fair for them if we just say, ‘We want a family member.’”
Working the plan
Northgate is 45 years into what Miguel described as its 100-year vision – a plan designed to sustain family ownership, professional management and cultural authenticity for decades to come.
Part of that plan involves structured succession and family governance, says Miguel, who has three sons and three daughters who work in the business.
Members of the third generation of the family – G3 – who want to move up the ranks are treated like any other team member.
“We post the position, and they’re going to have to compete, because we don’t want just them to get a position if they cannot deliver in growing the company,” he said.
While the company remains led by G2s Oscar and Jesús González, by 2030 or so, a G3 will probably be stepping into a spot in the Office of the President, Miguel noted.
As always at Northgate, great thought and deliberation will go into that decision as well as the many others that affect the company’s 7,000-plus employees.
“We have to think of all those people before we make any moves,” he said. “That’s what will take us to 100 years.