Not a Wednesday goes by when Oscar Gonzalez isn’t gathered with his family over lunch.
He calls these weekly gatherings “a family check-in” with the three generations behind Northgate Gonzalez Markets, one of the largest and most successful Mexican supermarkets in the U.S.
When Northgate opened its first store in Anaheim in 1980, Gonzalez was just a kid who reigned as king of its in-house arcade video games. Forty-three years on, he’s helping to run the supermarket chain full of moving parts.
The Gonzalez Reynoso family has expanded its enterprise across Southern California with 43 stores in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties. It also branched into other areas, including commercial real estate, healthcare, banking, and the first-of-its-kind Mercado Gonzalez by Northgate Markets, a food hall that recently opened in Costa Mesa.
The day of Mercado Gonzalez’s soft opening happened to be a lunchtime get-together.
“We have a formal board of directors and quarterly meetings like any other corporation, but this is more about enjoying each other and breaking bread,” said Gonzalez, who serves as a co-president and has been instrumental in expanding the company into new areas.
Even as new generations have grown the business, Northgate Gonzalez Markets continues to celebrate and honor its founders’ legacy.
It goes back to family patriarch Miguel Gonzalez Sr. He ran a small shoemaking shop in Jalisco, Mexico, that fire destroyed in the 1960s. With no means to support his family, he and his two teenage sons, ages 17 and 18, immigrated to the U.S. for work, leaving behind his wife and younger children for several months over the course of years.
“I think my father’s real strength was hard work, perseverance, honesty, and a deep, deep love for his wife and his family,” said Gonzalez, who at 53 is the youngest of Miguel Sr.’s 13 children. “That was the force behind all the decisions he made in his life.”
In 1976, the family was reunited in Orange County.
Gonzalez Sr. and his namesake, Miguel, eventually mortgaged their homes and put in the equity to launch a business that’s now booming, thanks to the entire family pitching in.
Southern California News Group caught up with Gonzalez last week to talk about the success of his family business and what lies ahead. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Why do you think Northgate Gonzalez Market initially took off?
A: There was a growing Mexican immigrant community in the city of Anaheim that needed a place to shop, where they felt respected and welcomed and that offered nostalgia for their hometowns. That’s the environment and the experience our family’s first Northgate Market created.
Q: Did you choose to enter the family business, or was it expected of you?
A: It wasn’t expected. It’s just that, from early on, I saw my dad and interacted with my siblings in the store. It was just a natural progression of my life growing up.
Q: When did you take on the shared role of top executive?
A: Let me answer that by telling you I have several brothers and sisters. We respect each other so much that titles are really for the outside world. Internally, each of us is an owner, and an owner trumps the title of co-president or CEO.
As a family, we make decisions together. Any big decisions that come our way are always brought to the Wednesday lunches we’ve been having for the last 35 years. We have been blessed to work together for so many years and not only run a beautiful business, but we’ve been able to do it with respect.
All right — having said that I don’t remember when I became co-CEO, but it’s probably been 15 to 20 years.
Q: You are the first of six members in your family to graduate from the Pepperdine Graziado Business School. How has that experience helped you in business?
A: We wanted to grow our business. For me to help lead the growth, it was important to be educated so that as we hired competent executives, I knew how to manage them and leverage their strengths to build a strong leadership team. The other relevant thing? I was in a Gonzalez bubble.
Going out into a new setting with very competent colleagues allowed me to understand how other owners of companies were leading their businesses and created a tremendous network for me as we encountered challenges.
Q: You recently celebrated the opening of your first Mercado Gonzalez by Northgate Market. Why did you decide to venture into the food hall niche?
A: We always dreamed of recreating a traditional mercado experience like you have in Mexico. From a heritage standpoint, it elevates our Mexican culture and people because it shows the larger community that Mexico and the food experience are something to be proud of.
In terms of how we elevate the community we serve, we’ve created community kitchens. People from the community who have amazing recipes for tamales, salsas or anything they’re proud of can rent the kitchens for a nominal fee.
They can produce their products in a space that is fully compliant with food safety standards and then sell these products in our store, eventually allowing them to be entrepreneurs.
Q: So, what’s next for the company?
A: We are very excited about creating a 100-year company where our focus on being the best authentic Mexican food experience is the heart of what we’re all about. Our concept and our stores have a tremendous opportunity to grow. We will look at ways to have a regional mercado and eventually have stores that support that market.
Q: Are you hiring?
A: Absolutely. We have more than 100 job openings in our market.
Q: How do you deal with wage demands?
A: We believe taking care of our people is paramount to the success of our business. Our wages are competitive. We have a 401k program. We have scholarship programs we fund 100%. We have career path opportunities. Frankly, we believe we have a special relationship with our associates. We are a people-first organization.
Title: Co-president
Organization: Northgate Gonzalez Markets, a family-run chain of Mexican supermarkets with 43 stores in California, began in Anaheim in 1980.
Education: Presidents and Key Executives (PKE) MBA from Pepperdine University’s Graziadio Business School in 2005.
Experience: “From a young age, I would mop the store at the end of the night. I’d be a box boy during the day. I helped in a number of departments. But I was a kid, so I also got to go off and play video games. We had (arcade) machines in our store.”
Fun fact: “I was the king of Centipede, Galaga and Asteroids.”
