Category Archives: Food & Entertainment

2026 H-E-B Quest For Texas Now Open

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Manuel Alvarez and his wife, Nadia Escalante, sit at their display at H-E-B offices in highlighting their Japanese cheesecakes. (Courtesy)

H-E-B is accepting submissions through April 22 for its 13th annual H-E-B Quest for Texas Best, a competition created to find the best Texas-made products. Qualified participants will compete for a combined $100,000 in cash prizes and the opportunity to feature their product on H-E-B shelves across the state. H-E-B’s Business Development Managers will select the top applicants who will present their products before a panel of judges selected by H-E-B…

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Millennial Couple Making Brownsville Shine

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It was more the opportunity to restore a historic building than starting a business that was the initial inspiration for Hector Zavala when he saw a 1860s-era building in Downtown Brownsville. Zavala was in his mid-20s at the time when spotting an old botica building on the corner of 11th and Washington streets. The over 160-year-old pharmacy building that also housed doctors’ offices and a clinic had been left vacant…

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Mid-Valley Growth Lifts Entrepreneurs

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O’s Burgers & More are a welcome new addition to the food court at the Rio Grande Valley Premium Outlets.

The growth of a small business can come from the result of well-crafted planning – or sometimes by happenstance. Norma Ozuna and her husband Eddie, with years of experience in working for corporate restaurant chains, made the move in 2021 to open their own business along Expressway 83 in Mercedes. O’s Burgers & More is located adjacent to the emerging Shops At Mercedes. The latter is a 250,000-square-foot retailing development…

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Attention To Detail Spices Up Vet’s Salsa

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David Carter stacks up his array of salsa products at a Rio Grande Valley street market. (Courtesy)

David Carter grew up a Kansas kid experiencing some of the more extreme weather fluctuations seen in the United States. There are severe winter storms and blizzards to go with severe thunderstorms over the Midwest plains. Then there are the tornadoes. Kansas averages over 80 tornadoes a year and the big storms of the state became immortalized in “The Wizard of Oz.” “I grew up in southwest Kansas and I…

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RGV Rubs Spice Up Texas Cuisine

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The TXQ Rubs include products entitled with the area codes of Texas cities as well as regional catch phrases.

Lou Castro creates what his TXQ Rubs call “Texas love” in the kitchen of a north Brownsville home nestled by a resaca.  Castro’s kitchen serves as a laboratory for the mix of spices, powders and ingredients that make up his growing collection of rubs for meats, vegetables and Mexican pastas. The TXQ Rubs are now on the shelves of hundreds of H-E-B stores, meat markets and specialty shops across Texas.…

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H-E-B’s Quest for Texas Best Includes McAllen Product

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Deli Spice Cooking Spices

The 2025 edition of H-E-B’s Quest for Texas Best competition is down to 10 finalists and one of them is based in McAllen. Sully Villareal’s Deli Spice Cooking Spices has made the cut among more than 370 products up for H-E-B’s review. An H-E-B press release states about Deli Spice, “Every blend is tested by families and perfected by a Mexican mom in Texas to help people cook authentic birria…

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PJ’s Offers ‘Happy Place’ In Los Fresnos

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PJ’s roasts all its coffee beans in small batches at its headquarters in New Orleans.

Israel Vega is a nurse practitioner who dabbles in renovating classic Chevys and is a founding member of a Rio Grande Valley-based semi-pro soccer team. Since January, you can add co-owner of a Los Fresnos coffee shop to his portfolio. PJ’s Coffee is a shop he co-owns with his business partner and fellow Los Fresnos native, Adam Abrego. They wanted to create a sense-of-community kind of place where people could gather…

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Entrepreneur Grows Brand Across Texas

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Mexican-style conchitas at Amor Y Pan are keto-friendly and low-carb.

Playing the long game in scaling up a business is a cumbersome process and often met with disinterest from would-be partners. Karina Saldivar’s Amor Y Pan in Brownsville was established as a successful health lifestyle market and bakery by 2024. Her business ambitions always extended outward beyond one location to getting her products on grocery store shelves. Getting to that goal via phone calls and introductory e-mails and receiving no…

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La Pale Scales Up To Success

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Daisy Alcazar beams with pride in front of La Pale packaging that will be on the shelves of over H-E-B stores in Texas.

La Pale’s store on International Boulevard in Brownsville is a vibrant ice cream shop featuring Mexican-style desserts. A big whiteboard in Daisy Alcazar’s back office at La Pale Frozen Bar in Brownsville tells the story of a small business making the leap to something much bigger. “HEB COUNTDOWN 48 DAYS TILL PICKUP,” is written in big blue letters. The message was written in late 2024 before the first delivery truck…

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