DALLAS — Meet Sarah Zubiate. The founder and CEO of Zubi's created dairy-free, organic queso and transformed her favorite Hispanic dips into healthy, allergen-free alternatives.
In Zubiate’s kitchen, her cooking is a lot like her family – unique and full of spice.
"I’m an immigrant, so for me, I wanted to create food that would make me proud, my heritage proud, my cultural foundation support system proud and they have been proud," says CEO & Founder of Zubi's Sarah Zubiate.
Inspired by her mother’s salsa recipe, Zubiate built a plant-based, keto-friendly snack line.
"If I could reduce the inflammatory ingredients, make something that was allergen-free. I never even told them it was healthy because all they cared about was something that taste good," says Zubiate.
Her crema, queso and salsa sold quickly at the farmer’s market, a few years later she started selling into retail.
"As fast as I want to scale, I always try and scale slowly enough so that I always maintain that decision-making," says Zubiate.
And to keep control over her creations, Zubiate moved production onto family-owned land.
"The zero-waste facility allows me to grow my organic products on my certified organic farm, literally bring everything in the day before, prep everything, have fresh produce taken into the manufacturing and anything left over is cycled back into my composting systems right back into the farm," says Zubiate.
With a background in investment forecasting, Zubiate was no farmer. But she says a good entrepreneur makes the effort to know their strengths and weaknesses, offset the latter by bringing in an expert.
"I had to learn this, and on and the lack of sleep, the bootstrapping, the tears, there were times when I thought am I able to do this? I’ll get emotional when I think about it, it took some grit, it took some digging down deep to build this dream," says Zubiate.
And Zubiate adds the courage to trust her business plan.
"People will push me to scale too quickly, people will tell me why don’t you want to take that huge account? I’ve told people it will put me out of business. The numbers are not going to lie. People mocking that sometimes has made me question, oh! Is this right? They come from the industry but adhering to my numbers and my gut it’s proven so beneficial," says Zubiate.
That means more opportunities to bring health and happiness into the kitchen.
Zubiate says when you’re launching new products, keep diversity and shelf space in mind; with very limited shelf space as it is you don’t want your products competing with one another.
You can find a discount coupon code to try the dips on Zubi’s website along with ways to incorporate her line into healthy recipes.