José Hernández displays a bag of dried yellow elderflowers behind the counter of his store on Lake Street in Minneapolis.
“This is good for diabetes,” he said in Spanish.
“Tronadora,” as it is known in Spanish, is one of the most popular herbs and it helped save Hernández’s once-failing business. Earthy and floral scents permeate a small, compact space. The walls are covered with dried herbs, vitamins and over-the-counter medicines from different countries in Latin America. Several suitcases sit on the high wall above the herbs, a reminder of how the business got started.
Hernández still remembers the panic he felt when he started his company, La Petaca LLC, in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world. The store name means “suitcase” in Spanish. As he leans against the glass window on the edge of the two-person booth at Mexico Plaza, 417 East Lake Street, the memory comes alive.
“Everyone would tell me, ‘Don’t do this,'” Hernández said.
The 48-year-old came to Minnesota undocumented from the Mexican state of Tabasco in 2003 in search of a better life. He worked a variety of jobs before obtaining legal residency in 2018. Hernandez wanted to support his family in Mexico, but Minnesota was already home, and Hernandez was a proud Minnesotan.
A year after getting his green card, Hernandez got tired of working for others and started thinking about starting his own business.
“I lost my job in 2019, so I started to understand what it takes to start a business,” Hernández said. “I just want to focus on selling suitcases.”
Advisors are skeptical of the idea. The organization he turned to for help told him now was not the right time to start a business. But Hernández stepped forward and opened his store.
When the company, then called J & B Alta Tendencia, was just getting started, the pandemic shut it down for a few months. After reopening, people are not interested in traveling as COVID continues to hospitalize people across the globe. Nobody buys suitcases. That’s when Hernandez shifted focus.
Drawing inspiration from his upbringing in rural Mexico, Hernández decided to take his knowledge of herbal medicine and turn it into a business. Hernández comes from a small community where his grandparents, mother and neighbors used herbs to treat ailments such as headaches, sore throats and fevers.
The herbal remedies he started selling catered to the needs of members of the Latino community who were looking for alternatives to traditional medicines.
Over time, customers start to form. A mostly Latino client base comes to him asking for all types of herbs. As demand grows, so does the diversity of inventory.
“Someone comes here and asks you for a product and tells you what to do with it, so you get the product, and now you sell it to other people,” Hernández said.
The company was in danger of closing again due to civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020. Demonstrators protested for several nights after Floyd’s killing, with much of the attention focused on the police’s 3rd Precinct on Lake Street near Hiawatha Avenue.
Several businesses along Lake Street and the Metro in the Twin Cities were vandalized, looted and burned during the unrest. Hernández’s business, about two miles west of the third arrondissement, was undamaged, but merchandise was thrown away, while neighboring vendor stands were looted or damaged. Hernandez doesn’t like to discuss the subject, saying it’s important that he still be able to work.
As with any business, Hernández said, there are good and bad. Right now, the business is entering some down months. But that doesn’t worry the fast-talking, soft-voiced man, who just smiles and points his finger and says, “He’s the one who decides everything.”
Hernádez said his company, like many in Plaza Mexico, is running low on inventories because suppliers tend to draw down inventories at the beginning of the year to save money.
“Some days we sell nothing, and other days we sell a month’s worth of stuff,” Hernández said.
The majority of La Petaca LLC’s clients are from outside the Twin Cities. According to Hernández, it’s these customers that keep the company afloat. Some people travel as far as North and South Dakota to stock up on herbs.
Hernandez’s limited English-speaking skills and non-Latino clientele’s skepticism of herbal medicine hampered Hernandez’s client growth. Still, Hernandez is grateful to the Minnesotans for giving him the opportunity to live out his dream, and he welcomes anyone who wants to try alternative medicine.
“Americans don’t understand our customs—they don’t understand how tea lowers blood sugar levels,” Hernández said. “We don’t know everything, but it can help, and this drug is a help.”
