Lita’s Mexican Foods began in Vancouver, B.C, at home in the kitchen in 2015. The family-run business shares their passion for recreating authentic Mexican meals, snacks, and desserts into easy-to-prepare 100% plant-based products. Lita’s products can now be found in several grocery stores across Western Canada and as far as Ontario. They are committed and certified as vegan, organic, and plastic negative. As they grow they continue to stand by their commitment to the environment and work hard to minimize their carbon footprint.
Argelio is from Monterrey, México. After immigrating to Canada at age 25, all he wanted was to find an authentic North Mexican style flour tortilla, like the ones he grew up eating. After realizing this uncooked tortilla style was missing from the Canadian market, the journey began! The recipe was formulated from traditional family recipes, without lard so it could be plant-based, yet still delicious, and without using preservatives or dough conditioners, which are commonly found in flour tortillas.
Jackie grew up in a very small town, on her grandparent’s dairy and vegetable farm in New Brunswick. Her young life was filled with whole foods, nature, animals, and watching her grandmother bake and cook for the entire family. She grew up to become a Holistic Nutritionist and an Acupuncturist with Traditional Chinese Medicine training in Canada and China. She was the first to become a vegetarian in her family and now lives a vegan lifestyle that allows her to embrace her role in product development at Lita’s.
Why the name Lita?
“When our daughter was learning to speak Spanish, she couldn’t say abuelita, which means grandmother in Spanish. But she did say Lita, and so the name Lita began – and what better way to honor our Mexican culture, cuisine, and women in the family than with Lita as our name. Abuelita Carola shared her love of food and family every day, and we miss her always.”
Question: How are you supporting other local businesses?
Answer: Over 50% of our business supports local and small businesses: such as local farmers’ markets, banking, contractors, ingredients, and packaging.
Question: What social and environmental practices are you proud of?
Answer: We donate our food products to local food banks and animal shelters.
We hire youth and women who face barriers to employment due to disabilities and/or immigration. We pay a wage above the minimum and offer our employees bonuses and programs to improve their food safety and manufacturing knowledge. We actively reduce our business waste by reusing incoming materials such as boxes and bags, we track our plastic usage, and offset this with our Certified Plastic Negative status. We work with local zero waste businesses with bulk products in reusable containers.
Woman Owned, Persons of Colour
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