Name: Flux: Building Alamo Candy Co. has been a treat for Felix Samame
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Flux: Building Alamo Candy Co. has been a treat for Felix Samame

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateFelix Samame copied the Hewlett-Packard founders’ playbook by hunkering down in his garage nearly 30 years ago to start his own business — but his was a candy company.Alamo Candy Co. expanded beyond that humble start and has been making candies in a former auto parts store at 2738 Blanco for about the last 25 years. It calls itself the home of sweet, sour and spicy candies.Save for a hiccup during the start of the pandemic, demand has been so great for its Picositas Belts, Cherry Bombs, gummy worms and bears in chamoy and other confections that this summer it moved its retail store to a nearly 21,000-square-foot building at 1149 W. Hildebrand.The move creates more manufacturing space at the Blanco building. But Samame said he’s scouting for a new building so Alamo Candy can increase its candy-making capacity even further.“When you interview us next year, you’re going to see a lot of difference,” Samame promised.Samame became familiar with San Antonio while stationed at the Army’s Fort Hood in the 1960s. He met his wife Juanita here. They eventually moved to New York City where he worked as a residential real estate agent.He didn’t like life in the big city so they returned to San Antonio, where they opened two video stores. The proliferation of the big video chains eventually put them out of business, though.Samame went to work for a small company selling candy to retailers. He then got the idea to start his own candy company.Samame, 78, discussed Alamo Candy’s founding, how it’s been affected by the coronavirus and its expansion plans during a recent interview. His son William later joined the interview. The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.Q:Tell me about how you started Alamo Candy Co.A: The first job I got (after the video stores closed) was selling (candy) to grocery stores for a very small company. That’s how I got in touch with independent grocers. I liked it (and saw) some future (in business for myself).We started Alamo Candy Co. with one item. The first item was Chinese candy. Salted plums. It’s very salty stuff. My wife learned how to start mixing it with spices, something like that. Salt. Lemon powder. I started selling it to the grocery stores. People liked it. So that’s how I started.Q:How did you fund your startup? Did you borrow from friends and family, or did you get a bank loan?A: No. I started with about $2,000 of my own money. That’s all I had, really, to start.Q:That’s not very much money to start a business.A: Yeah, but like I said, we (started) in the garage. (When I was) selling candy for this (small) company, I learned the business. I noticed store owners were desperately looking for Mexican candies.(After making the Chinese candy), my wife learned how to prepare another item. And another item, and another item and so on. Then I rented a place on Basse Road. And then we rented here on the corner of Blanco. Then we started growing.Q:Tell me about the candies you make.A: (Besides) the ones we make, we season candies that we buy from other companies. For example, we buy peanuts and we season them. Same thing we do with some candies. So we make our own … from scratch. I buy the gummy bears and worms from big companies, and we season them. We put spices on them.Q:And you put the Alamo Candy Co. name on them?A: Of course. We make them here. I buy bulk. We season the candies, and then we pack it. We sell to H-E-B, Walmart, Walgreens, 7-Eleven.Q:Do you sell in other places besides Texas?A: We went a show in Las Vegas, an expo, to show our products. People go crazy. They go, “Oh, we’ve never seen this.” We’re very unique. We got so many customers with H-E-B and all these big companies (that) here we cannot supply (everyone). So our main customers are here in Texas.Q:What led you to open a retail store here on Blanco?A: Since we bought this place, we started manufacturing here. And we have enough space for a retail store here in the front. People started coming. We are very popular. Very popular. People from Houston, from Dallas, from California, when they come for vacation, they come here. “Oh, we don’t have this in California. We don’t have this in Chicago.” Which is true. We also make chili powder for the fruit. Mexican people eat their fruit with chili powder, seasoned.So then we got the opportunity to buy that place on Hildebrand. It used to be a carpet store. Atlas Carpet store. So we bought that place. It took us about three months to fix it (up). We moved this store about three months ago. Big store.We (now) have space here to put machines in. We bring some machines (in). Maybe later on, we’ll be able to make enough for other states. They want our products.Q:Do you import candies from Mexico?A: Not directly, but we buy from big importers, some from Mexico. We have to have candy from Mexico. That’s how we started also, selling candy from Mexico.Q:How many employees do you have?A: Close to 80.Q:What are your top-selling candies?William Samame: Picositas Belts. That’s our top No. 1 seller. (A sour candy with sweet chili powder.) It’s nowhere near the flavor of licorice, but it’s in the licorice category. So it’s like a sour belt infused with sweet chili powder.Q:What are some other big sellers?FS: Chinese candy. The dried salted plums.WS: Not so much top selling, but it is our longest-lasting product.FS: El Pollo Lucky chili powder has become very popular.WS: It’s like sweet chili powder. You can put it on candy or eat it by itself. It’s like Pixy Stix. We also make chamoy. Another two popular items that we make our Cherry Bombs and gummy bears in chamoy.Q:What is chamoy?WS: It’s a fruit-based candy. Like any of our other products, you can eat it by itself or you can enjoy it as a topping.FS: We also invented the pickle with chamoy. Now it’s going crazy. We buy pallets of pickles. We process it. H-E-B is buying like crazy.Q:Felix, do you have a favorite candy?FS: Of ours? (Laughs.) I would say …WS: He doesn’t even eat it.FS: You know why? It’s because I’m Peruvian. Mexico is very different.Q:When’s the last time you developed a new candy?WS: Honestly, we come up with new candies every day. But the demand for the products we already carry is so high, it’s hard for us to keep up with the candies we already manufacture.Q:How many different products do you make?WS: At this moment, we’re easily around 40. That’s just different products, that’s not even the different presentations (or packaging). With different presentations, you’re going to get up to a hundred or so. We make different presentations for H-E-B also. They like to stick with the smaller packs.Q:How has Alamo Candy been affected by the pandemic?WS: Once corona did start, we lost about 50 percent of our employees just to the fear of corona. Little by little, we’ve been getting it back. In the last three months, we’ve probably doubled the size of our production team and at least tripled the size of our production staff.Q:What’s the hardest part about your business?FS: The hardest part of my business, really, is waiting for my sons (becomes choked up) to take good care, to learn (the business) so we can be retire. My wife and I still have to come here because the business is really very popular. Very recognized all over the United States with the Spanish people. They want our product, but we cannot produce.WS: The hardest part right now is keeping up with demand.Q:Why don’t your children take over if you want to retire?FS: They’re not ready.Q:What do you like most about being in this business?FS: We have provided jobs for many people.Q:What do you like least about this business?FS: That we cannot satisfy our customers yet. We cannot meet the demand.Q:We’re just days away from Christmas. What holiday generates the most sales for Alamo Candy Co.?WS: There’s no down season. There’s a party every day. It’s always somebody’s birthday or some type of event. It used to be that our down time was around the holidays and we would get a little break, because our products weren’t based on holiday themes. They would get pushed to the back of the stores, and the holiday-themed items would come to the front. Now, so we don’t lose our spots, we’re coming up with holiday-themed containers and different presentations of the boxes. We’re doing pretty good during the holidays now.We actually have a big order of Valentine hearts of our top-selling items going to H-E-B for Valentine’s. Our two-top selling items, our Picositas Belts and our Cherry Bombs. There will be three presentations. One will be Picositas Belts. One will be Cherry Bombs, and one will be a combo presentation. And they’ll be in a heart-shaped container. H-E-Bs all over South Texas will be selling those. They’ll be in stores in January, I believe.Q:How many children do you have?FS: Three. They all work here.Q:What do they do?FS: Ricky is running the retail. My daughter, Patricia, is in charge of the formulas and production. My son William, he is in charge of manufacturing.Q:Your plan is to keep the business in the family?FS: Keep the business in the family.Q:When would you like to retire?FS: Really, as soon as this coronavirus, we get free of that. I want to start traveling. I’ve been traveling all over the world. I hope we get the chance again to do that.Q:Tell me about your expansion plans.FS: We’re already looking for a bigger place. This (space) is small. Right now, we have 20,000 square feet here on this corner, warehousing and production.Q:What do you need?FS: About 30, 35,000 square feet.WS: Almost doubling the size of everything, production and warehouse. We’re at a point now where we’re going to have to decide, are we going to move up to the next level or are we going to stay where we’re at.We have plans for the future. also, to have a bigger store. In the near future, there should be a lot more stuff, party supplies and to-go containers.Patrick Danner covers banking, insurance, business litigation and bankruptcies. To read more from Patrick, . | Twitter:

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateFelix Samame copied the Hewlett-Packard founders’ playbook by hunkering down in his garage nearly 30 years ago to start his own business — but his was a candy company.Alamo Candy Co. expanded beyond that humble start and has been making candies in a former auto parts store at 2738 Blanco for about the last 25 years. It calls itself the home of sweet, sour and spicy candies.Save for a hiccup during the start of the pandemic, demand has been so great for its Picositas Belts, Cherry Bombs, gummy worms and bears in chamoy and other...

Flux: Building Alamo Candy Co. has been a treat for Felix Samame

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