Where is goya made

With almost 1, items on sale, Goya Foods Inc. Its products include a full range of grocery, dairy, and frozen goods aimed at the general public as well as people of Latin American or Iberian birth or ancestry. Goya Foods was founded in by Prudencio Unanue. He had left Spain as a youth in for Puerto Rico, where he established a small food business. He later moved to the metropolitan New York area and became a food broker for products imported from Spain.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in , food supplies were cut off, and Unanue found himself out of work. He obtained a shipment of Moroccan sardines from a Spanish company and, with his wife, packaged them in a small Manhattan warehouse, selling to grocery stores. Unanue kept the Goya brand name of the sardines and also gave the Goya name to the olives and olive oil that he imported and sold.

Unanue established two canneries in Bayamon, Puerto Rico to produce the foods the newcomers could not buy in supermarkets, such as beef-tripe stew, tropical juices, pasteles meat-filled pasties , gandules pigeon peas , and some 25 varieties of beans. Goya salesmen went to the small Puerto Rican-owned grocery stores called bodegas to take orders for these goods. According to one of the founder's grandsons, other companies were selling foods to New York's Hispanics, but "the one thing that we did that was different was advertise, something unheard of in the '50s.

By Goya Foods was selling to food stores in the Midwest as well as along the East Coast from Boston to Miami, servicing 7, accounts through 67 Spanish-speaking salesmen. The company's packaging facilities were in Brooklyn. Goya de Puerto Rico, the separate family-run corporation formed in , was responsible for operations on the island.

The nation's largest distributor of Latin foods, Goya estimated that 80 percent of its customers were ethnic Puerto Ricans or Cubans. Prudencio's son Joseph became president and chief executive officer of the company in the early s. The cooking, seasoning, and quality control for all items was being done in Puerto Rico, which accounted for about a quarter of the sales total.

A plant in Seville, Spain processed all the olive oil, olives, and capers, and another in the Dominican Republic handled pigeon peas and the fruit pulp for Goya's tropical juices. The company also owned a Chicago warehouse for distribution in the Midwest and other areas of expanding Hispanic population growth and a Florida fresh produce facility that made Goya one of the largest grocery wholesalers in the Miami area.

The main facility had moved from Brooklyn to Secaucus, New Jersey, where the company had a ,square-foot distribution and packaging plant.

Vertically integrated Goya had its own fleet of trucks, offering retailers direct, next day delivery from the warehouses. Its salesmen dealt directly with the retailers rather than through wholesalers or brokers , making weekly visits to all its accounts and selling Goya's goods to the smallest bodega at the same prices it did to supermarkets, which were now accounting for half of revenues.

According to the company's sales chief, this was a comparatively recent change, because "Fifteen years ago we had a hard time appealing to supermarkets. People told us they didn't want to offend their white customers. Rice and beans each were accounting for about 15 to 20 percent of Goya's sales in Seasonings, including sauces as well as herbs, spices, and condiments, made up another 15 to 20 percent, and olives and olive oils accounted for 10 to 15 percent. Goya's odd items counting different product sizes also included preserves, stews, canned vegetables and meats, soups, cheeses, and crackers, along with such exotic items as African red-palm oil, Cuban mango paste, Jamaican ginger beer, and malta--a nonalcoholic, noncarbonated licorice-tasting beverage composed of grain, malt, and hops.

The company had enjoyed only limited success, however, reaching the highly competitive Cuban market in Florida. And they've made a concerted effort to offer donations to those in need during the COVID pandemic.

According to the brand's Facebook page , Goya donated 40, pounds of food to distribute in bags of groceries to families in the New York City area who were impacted by the virus. That many veggies, beans, and more from the company can go a long, long way. According to a Cision PR Newswire press release , Goya Foods representatives traveled to the White House where the company's chief executive officer, Robert Unanue, was given the honor of introducing President Barack Obama at a reception that was held in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.

It was here that President Obama honored Goya Foods for its history with and commitment to the Hispanic community — the brand being the only company President Obama saluted in such a manner. This meeting started an ongoing relationship between Goya Foods and the Obama Administration. According to a White House press release , Goya Foods committed resources to promote the USDA's MyPlate MiPlato, in Spanish to help families make healthier, balanced choices about food using pamphlets, brochures, cookbooks, and even coupons.

First Lady Michelle Obama stated, "Everything that Goya is doing — from the MiPlato posters and pamphlets to cookbooks and recipes — centers around the idea that we parents can make simple changes to help their children lead healthier lives. Goya's commitment to community expands beyond scholarships and food donations. According to the Goya Foods website , the brand understands the impact food and beverage manufacturing has on the environment, and they take responsibility for "leading the way for environmental change.

For instance, as the largest user of solar energy among Hispanic-owned food and beverage companies, Goya Foods has earned a place as one of the top 10 corporate solar users in the industry within the United States.

There are many facets to Goya's environmentally-friendly building designs —all of them equally important to the outcome — but a few of the highlights include:. The point to all of this is, Goya Food is being proactive in considering the environment as it expands its operations.

And really, Goya Foods could be used as a stellar example of private companies taking personal responsibility for the world's environmental problems. This initiative is intended to improve access to educational and economic opportunities for Hispanic Americans — a positive initiative, to be clear, and one that is aligned with Goya Foods' long history of providing support to the Hispanic community.

So what's the problem? President Trump doesn't exactly have a strong history of supporting the Hispanic community, and he often disparages Latinos and Latin culture.

One well-known example of this is when he ran his original Presidential campaign partly on the concept of "building a wall" between Mexico and the United States to reduce the influx of immigrants from the south. According to an article in The New York Times , Unanue stood next to President Trump in the Rose Garden and stated, "We're all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder," before going on to compare President Trump to his own grandfather, the founder of Goya Foods.

The Hispanic community largely views President Trump as someone who incites racism from his followers, which has resulted in increased violence against Latinos.

In an article in The New York Times , the deputy vice president for policy and advocacy for UnidosUS, a Latino civic engagement organization, Clarissa Martinez de Castro said the speed and size of the boycott showed "how raw people in the community feel about the president. The shooter in this instance was charged with federal hate crimes after stating he wanted to kill as many Mexicans as he could.

For this reason, Trump's approval from the Hispanic community has hovered around only 25 percent in recent polls. The point being, many Latinos felt deeply betrayed when Unanue — a true leader in the Hispanic community — chose to stand next to Trump and offer him praise as a leader and a builder.

What happened next was a call to boycott and images flooding social media of people clearing their pantries of Goya products and throwing them in the trash. Hashtags boycottgoya and goyaway started trending almost immediately on Twitter, and other politicians, like Democrat U. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, took to their own social pages to commit to the boycott. The result of this simple, yet deeply resonant pledge is the evolution of Goya Foods as a leader in the Latin American food industry and a trusted American brand.

The history and story of Goya are as much about the importance of family and values as it is about achieving the American dream and helping to cultivate the Latin culture in the United States. Driven by the belief that there was a growing consumer market for high-quality, fresh-tasting, Latin foods, the Unanues catered to local Hispanic families by distributing authentic Spanish products including olives, olive oil, and sardines.

The company relocated from Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn in , until it established its current headquarters in New Jersey in From - , Goya opened five new state-of-the-art manufacturing and distribution centers in Texas, California, Georgia and New Jersey to meet consumer demands for Goya products. In total, the company now boasts 26 facilities throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Spain, and employs over 4, worldwide.

Goya has always strived to be a company of passionate people that care about making a difference in the community. In , Goya was ranked 2 as a leading U.