Amapola Supermarkets Celebrates 50 Years of Serving the Latino Community

Sept. 11, 2011 - PRLog -- The celebration will take place Sept. 25, 2011, from noon to 6 p.m., at the Downey location in Downey, CA . As a thank you to its loyal customers, Amapola Supermarkets will provide food and entertainment, including famous Latino KBUE radio personality Don Cheto and Alberto Murillo.

On September 22, Amapola will also host a private VIP celebration for selected guests and local dignitaries as demonstration of gratitude for their support during these past years. The festivities and awareness campaign of Amapola’s 50th Anniversary is being overseen by the award-winning Los Angeles advertising agency, Power Media Group.

“We are very grateful to be able to serve our customers for 50 years now. Our success is due to their loyalty. Since we are community-oriented, our biggest promotion is word-of-mouth,” says Carlos Galvan Jr., who serves as Amapola’s vice president and CFO. “We will also be saluting our employees, some of whom have been with us for 30 years. They put in all the hard work. They are a significant key to our success.”

La Amapola, Inc., is a family-owned chain of three grocery stores that cater primarily to the Hispanic market. The first store opened in 1961, in South L.A., under the visionary leadership of Francisco Galvan, who immigrated to the United States from Guadalajara. The 9,000-square-foot store only sold tortillas and the masa needed to make tamales. Throughout the years, The Amapola Supermarkets became famous and proof to provided the best quality tortillas hand-made and masa for tamales. Every holiday season, thousands of clients, made lines out side the stores during hours, before they open doors to serve them. Many people travel from different parts of California and out of the state.  

Upon retirement in 1974, his son, Carlos Galvan, took over the reins, expanding the business to include meats and a full-service deli in the 1980s. In the mid-1990s, a second, 25,000-square-foot store was opened in Downey on the corner of Florence Ave. and Old River School Rd. The company’s biggest store, the market includes a silo to store corn for the tortillas that are made in-house.

Two years ago, a third Hispanic market appeared on Paramount Blvd. and Garfield Ave. The company also owns a warehouse in Santa Fe Springs, where the inventory is stored and the corn is cooked for the fresh tortillas. The corn is then sent to the individual stores for grinding. The supermarkets also offer tamales, carnitas, prepared foods, meats and fresh produce.

“My grandparents’ and father’s hard work paved the way for us,” Galvan Jr. says. “A significant part of our success is due to three factors – a good product line, a good following and tuning in to changes in demographics. Today, the business is flourishing, with Amapola’s special-recipe tortilla still our most popular food product.”

About Power Media Group
A public relations and advertising agency specializing in creating all-inclusive Spanish language campaigns for high-profile clients, including Universal Music Latin and Creativa Interiors Primor, Power Media Group helps businesses build lasting relationships with the Latino community. As the 2010 Minority Small Business Champion of the Year, Power Media Group utilizes grassroots media campaigns to reach out to the booming Hispanic population, who contribute more than $1 trillion to the U.S. economy annually. Last year, principals Patricia and Tony Garcia launched the Power Woman Business Center, a business incubator that reaches out to diverse entrepreneurs who are trying to develop and grow their businesses during these precarious economic times.