Family business shares recipe for success

By Tiffany Cuddihy | Citizens 

Pittsburgh’s La Dorita Cooks a recipient of $15K Citizens Minority-Owned Small Business Grant

More than a decade ago, Josephine Caminos Oria was a CFO of a medical company. She had been in the field for 16 years by then, and it was becoming clear that while she was successful, she was not fulfilled.

She craved something more.

"I was always the only woman at the table," says Oria. "I felt like in order to shatter that glass ceiling, I'd have to take my future into my own hands."

She found her answer, not by looking ahead to her future, but by reaching back into her past.

Born in La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Josephine would eventually move to Pittsburgh with her family, including her grandmother.

"Growing up, I would cook alongside my Grandma Dorita, who instilled in me a love of all things Argentine," she shared. "Especially dulce de leche."

Dulce de leche (duel-say ● day ● lay-chay) is a pure form of preserved milk with added sugar, and it is a cultural staple in Argentina. It is served as a sweet and creamy golden spread that is enjoyed starting at sunrise and throughout the day and night.

"I would be eating dulce de leche in the morning and people would ask me why I was having dessert for breakfast," Oria commented. "As peanut butter is to America, or hazelnut spread (NUTELLA®) is to Italy, dulce de leche is to Latin America ... we put it on everything."

Sensing an untapped market in the States for the dish, Oria saw a golden (and delicious!) opportunity to start her own business around it.

In 2009, Oria and her husband, Gaston, who is also from Argentina, partnered with Oria’s mother as three-way investors in a new family business, focused on making authentic dulce de leche. They named the venture 'La Dorita Cooks' in honor of Grandma Dorita, who celebrated her 90th birthday that same year. Dorita told Oria how to make her recipe from memory, the way many treasured family recipes are passed down.

Adding in locally sourced milk from a nearby Pennsylvania farm, Oria created an authentic Argentine dulce de leche that was proudly made in America. The dish is made in small batches, but every jar carries big meaning for the small business owner.

"I come from two cultures, and they are both very important for me and my family to represent," says Oria.

While there aren’t a lot of ingredients to perfect, working with milk can be difficult, and it took Oria several months (and several burnt pots) to create the signature flavor of La Dorita Cooks' dulce de leche.

"My grandma was of the generation where they didn’t write down recipes, so it took me quite a while to get it right without actual measurements to go by," she laughed.

"I come from two cultures, and they are both very important for me and my family to represent."

Josephine Caminos Oria, president and founder of La Dorita Cooks

Not only did Oria get the recipe right, she got it so right that Whole Foods® picked up La Dorita Cooks to be sold at its mid-Atlantic region stores.

"We worked so hard getting our business off the ground and out to the people, this was such an amazing opportunity," says Oria.

While it was a very exciting time for the Oria family, it was also a very difficult one. Just as they received the Whole Foods news, Oria's mother passed away unexpectedly.

"There was a lot going on and we were missing her, but we needed to make the decision to either move forward or to fold the business," Oria shares.

They decided to keep going.

Innovation drives growth for all involved

In 2010, La Dorita Cooks outgrew the Oria’s kitchen. They needed a commercial kitchen to start manufacturing the large quantities of orders from Whole Foods. Some churches in the area let them use their kitchen space, but the couple had to lug their very heavy equipment back and forth every time they used the space. Plus, they were only able to use the kitchen at night when their children were asleep.

The Oria's ultimately decided to build a licensed kitchen in their home. It took months and was a large investment, but a necessary one. Gaston was actively involved in production (and their children made great taste testers). This setup allowed the family business to truly be run by the family.

By 2012, La Dorita Cooks grew to the point where they were ready to establish a commercial kitchen outside of the Oria’s home, but still within the greater Pittsburgh area. While the wife and husband team both worked corporate jobs as their main source of income, the couple agreed expansion was necessary if they wanted to grow.

"We found that buying a commercial kitchen space is incredibly expensive and we were still working as a startup," says Oria.

She had heard about a culinary shared kitchen in California, and became convinced that this was what they needed near them in Pennsylvania.

The culinary shared kitchen concept operates like a shared workspace, where food entrepreneurs can work independently in a cooperative kitchen space. It acts as a proxy to capital for startups or as a way for existing food companies to scale. So, instead of having to invest $50K to $100K in a sole kitchen space, a new business can join a shared kitchen community for a few thousand dollars, including licensing fees and membership costs.

There was one big problem. There were no culinary shared kitchens in Pittsburgh. So when the Oria family eventually did invest in a space for their business, they put feelers out to the community to see if any other local food startups were interested in creating the first culinary shared kitchen in the area. When the answer was a resounding yes, there was no turning back.

Within a year they formed their Kitchen Share Incubator Program. And with 4,000 sq. ft. of co-working space, the Oria’s weren’t only able to grow their own business, they were able to support the growth of other food businesses in the neighborhood. They currently house operations for 23 other food industry professionals.

The incubator is located in the community of Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, just five miles from Pittsburgh. It’s not only a shared kitchen space, it also works as a network of like-minded local business owners, who work as collaborators and not as competitors. Oria notes how refreshing this is to see since the food industry is such a competitive industry to break into.

The mission of the project is to contribute to the economic development in the borough of Sharpsburg, where more than one-fourth of households rely on food stamps and the poverty rate is 22.9%. By providing low-cost access to fully equipped and licensed commercial kitchen space, the incubator is able to provide a service that is economically more realistic for the future culinary entrepreneurs of Sharpsburg.

"There are many women-owned and immigrant-run businesses that we work with through the Kitchen Share Incubator, because a shared workspace helps absorb some of the upfront financial risk of opening and operating a commercial kitchen," says Oria. "Particularly with immigrant food entrepreneurs, who see the food they cook as a direct connection to their home country, the thresholds for entry are particularly difficult."

"Not only because it's costly to run a business in America, but oftentimes any licensing they had in their home country doesn’t apply here," she added.

As someone who is passionate about representing her own Argentine culture in the U.S., Oria is committed to making the Kitchen Share Incubator an inclusive place where everyone has the opportunity to share their culture and story through a shared love of food.

Luckily for us, unlike her grandmother, Oria does like to write down the recipes she shares. In 2017, Oria wrote a Dulce de Leche cookbook, in which she invites readers and their families to take a seat at Grandma Dorita’s kitchen table, where it all began. This was also around the time Oria was finally able to quit her corporate job and focus on La Dorita Cooks and the Kitchen Share Incubator full time.

However, this past year when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, La Dorita Cooks and their tight-knit community of local food entrepreneurs experienced unimaginable and unforeseen struggles. Unlike grocery stores, which have seen an increase in business during the pandemic, the food service industry has been crippled by social distancing ordinances and the lack of access to essential ingredients. This was obviously devastating for a business that relied so heavily on the success of the local food economy.

"It's been awful, we couldn’t even collect membership fees. Plus, we had just completed a half-million-dollar expansion with two new kitchens added to the space when COVID started," Oria said. "We were even in the midst of offering team building events and corporate training for added income."

Despite all of the setbacks, the Oria family is committed to making things work, because they know that if their doors close, so do the doors of all the businesses that rely on the shared kitchen space.

In September, Citizens awarded La Dorita Cooks a $15,000 grant through the Citizens Minority-Owned Small Business Grant program. The small business is one of 100 grant recipients as part of our $1.5 million commitment to minority-owned businesses.

The grant money will be used to help cover operation costs for 2021, so La Dorita Cooks can start off on the right foot. The couple hasn’t taken a salary in months, so the funds will also go toward helping them catch up on their everyday business expenses. Oria is optimistic that La Dorita Cooks and the Kitchen Share Incubator will continue to serve the community and their family’s legacy for years to come.

"We love sharing our own food startup experiences with like-minded entrepreneurs within our shared kitchen and around Pittsburgh," Oria concludes. "I finally found success on my own terms, and better yet, I get to share it with my family."

Small business advice that works

We asked Josephine Caminos Oria to share a few pieces of advice on how to turn a fledgling startup into a sustainable success:

1. Stay open-minded. It's important to keep an open mind, so you can be agile with your business. Especially during a pandemic. For example, using virtual learning platforms to reach people instead of in-person trainings.
2. Never stop brainstorming. Figure out how to make your greatest challenges work for your company instead of against it. Oftentimes, when you find your way around the “noes” there is something even better waiting for you on the other side.

Looking forward to 2021

The rules have changed and the world of business, but that doesn’t mean the work stops. Here are some ways Josephine Caminos Oria plans to continue her mission with a new sense of focus and fire in the new year:

1. Join a network of like-minded people. It’s more important than ever to connect with people who have similar goals — whether in person or via social media, virtual workshops, and events. When it gets hard to focus on the future, it helps to know you’re not alone in your struggles and successes.
2. Rewrite your business plan. If you wrote a business plan last year, now would be a good time to sit down and rewrite it. Most industries, especially the food industry, will never be the same. Do your research, create a contingency plan and develop new goals that will define the “new normal” for your business.
3. Focus on how your business can make a difference. Finding ways to give a deeper meaning to your business, not only helps the community during this difficult time, it can also restore your sense of purpose. Remind yourself why you started your business, and why you’re passionate about how it serves you and the people around you.

Citizens: Our journey for social equity

At Citizens, we live every day by a credo that calls for us to embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion and to operate with understanding, empathy, and care.

The Citizens Minority-Owned Small Business Grant program is a central part of our multimillion-dollar commitment to creating a culture of inclusion within our company and throughout our greater communities. We encourage you read more about our plans at the link below.