Vallarta Moving To Broader Appeal – ‘We’ve Got To Give Everybody Something’

In 1985, the Gonzalez family opened a small market in Van Nuys, California, called Carnicería Vallarta. The family focused on selling traditional cuts of meats popular in their native Mexico. They worked hard to build a name for themselves by offering high-quality authentic products, providing a high level of customer service and treating employees as an extension of the family.

Those priorities remain at the core of today’s Vallarta Supermarkets, though there are major changes afoot as the grocer completes its 40th year in business with nearly 65 stores in California.

The Shelby Report of the West joins in celebrating Vallarta Supermarkets for both its 40th anniversary and being named West Retailer of the Year for 2025.

Seven months into his role as chief marketing and merchandising officer at Vallarta Supermarkets, Jay Sharrock already has visited every store and met with every person in his organization. It’s the kind of commitment that defines his approach to leadership – hands-on, relationship-driven and relentlessly focused on understanding what makes a company tick.

Jay Sharrock

“The team’s great,” Sharrock said of his merchandising and buying staff, who initially wondered about the newcomer. “It took them a little while … but ultimately, people, once they understand [where you’re coming from], everybody puts their head down and goes, and I see it every single day.”

Under Sharrock’s leadership, the merchandising team is navigating a delicate balance: maintaining Vallarta’s identity as a Hispanic grocer while expanding its appeal to a broader, multicultural customer base around certain of its stores.

“We have to be very cautious that we don’t lose who we are, our identity,” Sharrock said. “We’ve got to learn to continue to have our identity but become more multicultural. Maybe not do everything for everybody, but we’ve got to give everybody something.”

Seeing into future

Sharrock didn’t arrive at Vallarta by accident. His path to Southern California began five and a half years ago during a store walk with his wife, a grocery industry veteran herself.

“After I walked in Vallarta, I turned to her and said, ‘I want to work for this company someday,’” he recalled.

When the opportunity finally came, “my wife was the first one to say ‘the answer is yes.’”

That moment was the culmination of a career built on seizing opportunities. Fresh out of college and planning to pursue a master’s degree in education, he received an unexpected job offer from his brother-in-law.

What was supposed to be a temporary position doing overnight stocking at Geyer’s Supermarkets in Ohio became a calling when, just over a year later, the company sent him to troubleshoot a struggling store in Vermilion, Ohio.

“That was my first opportunity of trying to run a grocery store without really being a store manager,” he said.

The experience was formative, guided by a mentor who remains close to him today. When that mentor left for Super Kmart and recruited Sharrock to join him, his trajectory shifted.

“I went to the interview process, and when I left, I got a phone call back. They said, ‘We don’t want you to be in a store. We want you to be in an office,’” Sharrock recalled.

Thus began his path in merchandising and procurement, and it was a leap. How does someone with minimal buying experience suddenly run procurement for an entire organization?

Sharrock said simply: relationships and a willingness to learn.

“This business, to me, is still today… you can be a vendor and a retailer and still have a relationship. You don’t have to always agree, but I always say, be firm but fair.”

When C&S Wholesale Grocers eventually promoted him to run procurement companywide, Sharrock faced chronic turnover among buyers. His solution was to stop recruiting from afar and start developing local talent.

“I started going to local universities in the area – people that are used to being in smaller towns – and we’d teach them how to buy.”

He even partnered with Hannaford Brothers, not a C&S customer, to give new hires a real-world grocery education.

“They actually allowed me to bring people in, and they would talk about grocery and walk around and tell them what a wing display, an end display is.”

Throughout his career, which has included running sales and merchandising for C&S in Houston and serving as COO at El Rio Grande, Sharrock developed a leadership philosophy rooted in his father’s advice: “Take pride in what you do and have a passion to be the best at whatever you choose to do. If you do those two things, you’ll always be successful in the end.”

That philosophy has required sacrifice. When his son called from New Hampshire asking to spend more time with his dad before he graduated from high school, Sharrock left his position at El Rio Grande to return to C&S in New England.

“When a young man is ready to move on and he wants to spend time with you, you take advantage of those things,” he said.

Today, Sharrock maintains an apartment in Santa Clarita while his wife remains in Texas where her oldest child is a high school junior. “We found a way to make it work,” he said. “She’s my biggest supporter.”

Impactful family business

At Vallarta, Sharrock found something he’d been searching for – a family business with the scale to make a real impact. His first 90 days were a whirlwind of store visits and employee meetings.

“It gave me a true reflection of who the company really is. A lot of companies talk about people, a lot of people talk about core values. It gave me the opportunity to see how much people really live it and believe it, every single day.”

What he discovered matched what he’d sensed during that store walk years earlier: “What I saw in the store is exactly what they are.”

The welcoming culture has enabled rapid progress.

“We’ve made so much progress on just little things. And I always tell people we’re not broken, but we’re not fixed,” Sharrock said. “There’s always things you can do better.”

Perhaps most impressive is Vallarta’s commitment to giving back. “A lot of people call them customers; I call them neighbors, and Vallarta treats everyone, whether they shop the store or not, as neighbors,” he said.

The company’s foundation focuses on feeding families and supporting children and schools. “Our job is to make sure we feed people. That’s what we do for a living, but we’ve got to make sure those who are less fortunate also have an opportunity to eat.”

Several Vallarta stores have opened in food deserts, bringing fresh groceries to underserved communities, which have responded very favorably, he said.

Looking ahead five years, Sharrock sees a company that could open stores just about anywhere and embrace demographic evolution.

“I believe our forte is that Latin flair, and we can still deliver that, but we can deliver that to everybody – doesn’t matter what age group, what demographic. None of that matters. It doesn’t have to just be in California,” he added.

This statement already is true; Vallarta will open a store in January in Arizona.

“As we continue to add that technology and build that mindset of being a little bit more open and understanding how demographics are changing, I think we could open stores just about anywhere in any type of climate,” Sharrock said.

Stay tuned.