Casa Sanchez Foods

Corporate history

Roberto and Isabel Sanchez immigrated from Zacatecas, Mexico, to San Francisco in 1923 and founded R. Sanchez & Co., a tortilla factory in Northern California. Tortillas were sold by the pound, wrapped in paper and string as was customary in Mexico. After Roberto's death, his widow and three young children took over the business. The company began in the Fillmore district, then a predominantly Hispanic area, and moved to the Mission district in 1968 as that neighborhood saw an influx of Latino residents. Soon after, Robert Jr. and Martha Sanchez began manufacturing fresh-packaged salsas to distinguish the company from other tortilla factories. Casa Sanchez became one of the highest-selling salsas in California according to Neilson reports and is widely known as a San Francisco staple. Its logo, 'The Cornman', depicts a boy in a sombrero riding an ear of corn like a rocket, inspired by the first moon landing, and the slogan is 'flavor out of this world'. The company remains family-operated into the fourth generation and has expanded to the entire West Coast, regularly sponsoring Latino events in the Bay Area and contributing over $100,000 to charity. In 1999, a marketing campaign offering free lunch for life to anyone who got a tattoo of 'The Cornman' attracted national attention, including from Forbes magazine; the promotion returned in March 2010. The Casa Sanchez restaurant closed in 2012.