New Latino supermarket offers pieces of home for its Richfield customers
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Three entrepreneurial brothers are making a gastronomic mark in the Twin Cities. This month, the trio behind Lomabonita Market opened their sixth — and biggest — location in Richfield.
Porfirio Castillo, the eldest of the brothers, said the public’s reaction to the store opening has been “great.”
“The first day that we open, there was like 2,000 people outside, waiting just for the opening,” he said.
Castillo gave MPR News a tour of the 52,000-square foot store, which offers an abundance of foods and services: fancy cakes, tripe, fresh vegetables, paletas made of fruit and juice, flowers, international money transfers, piñatas, flowers, a Mexican restaurant and, coming in December, tortillas made in-store.
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Floral bouquets greet customers at the entrance. Just a few short steps away from the fragrance of the flowers, customers can send money around the world. It’s a needed service for many of the grocery store’s customers, folks who come from other countries looking for foods familiar to them — pieces of home that are hard to find elsewhere.
There's a long wall of fresh vegetables under the letters that spell out “vegetales.” Broccoli, green peppers, cilantro — it’s all there.
The brothers have different talents, Porfirio Castillo said. Gregorio oversees produce and the bakery. Fernando is in charge of meats, deli and the paleteria. Porfirio heads up the money transfers service, the floral shop and customer service.
Gregorio Castillo, the youngest of the brothers, is stocking up the banana area when we walk by on our tour. Nearby, the refrigerator at the international cheese section is home to international queso.
“On your left side, we have all the dairy, all the products from all over the world. We got from Ecuador, Mexico, Venezuela, United States,” Porfirio Castillo said.
A few steps further down the aisle, we hit the bakery. Beautifully decorated cakes are on display in glass cases. The bakers behind the displays decorate and prepare the cakes. It feels like the cakes could also be seen on “The Great British Baking Show.”
One of the cake decorators, Valeria Bello, said she introduced the idea of a chocolate passionfruit cake when the bakery staff was asked about new cake ideas.
Bello grew up in Venezuela and on her birthday each year, her father would buy her that cake. Here’s a taste of her mouth-watering description:
It’s “a chocolate cake made with a special passion fruit milk that we make. A creamy filling made with passion fruit pulp,” Bello said in Spanish. “It’s really delicious, I highly recommend it if you want to try a slightly more tropical flavor and a combination that’s different.”
Porfirio Castillo takes us to what he calls the Piñata Station, a design idea the brothers picked up from California.
Sparkly piñata stars hang from above and lots of Mexican and U.S. candies fill the shelves in this enclave within the store. These piñatas have midwestern roots, made in Chaska and Chicago.
Porfirio Castillo moves on to the paleteria — a whimsical place within the store.
They sell ice cream and paletas, which is frozen fruit and natural juices on a stick. The paleteria also sells cut up fresh fruit and aguas frescas, literally meaning fresh waters. Actually, though, they are juices — and interesting combinations at that. Offerings include cucumber and lemon, pina colada, without the rum, and horchata.
The Castillo brothers’ supermarket chain began two decades ago as Panaderia Lomabonita, a bakery in Crystal. Two years later, they added on a meat department and groceries. Their supermarket was born with the bakery still retaining its name.
The first market in Crystal holds a special place within the family, Porfirio Castillo said. It has grown from 900 square feet to 12,000 square feet.
Porfirio Castillo described the original business as “the mother” to the babies, which is what he calls the stores that followed.
“Then we opened Savage, the second one, the third one was St. Paul. The fourth one, Columbia Heights, and we have in Monticello, too,” he said.
The market’s popularity is no mistake. The brothers have spent years researching grocery stores around the country and have worked hard to open in this location, which has sat vacant since 2018 when Rainbow Foods closed.
“Seven years ago, when Rainbow store closed down, we stopped here. We look around and we say, we dream to put one store here,” Castillo said.
“We put [in] an offer, and they say no, because they don't know for sure what we'll do here,” he added. “They was planning to make apartments to do something else. So we was denied.”
The Castillo brothers tried again in 2022, but their offer was denied a second time. Two years ago, Porfirio Castillo’s realtor called to tell him there might be a chance this go-around.
“So we put an offer, we got accepted. So we're here,” he said.
The brothers are relying on family, like their niece Melissa, and friends like Victor, who started at the Crystal location 18 years ago, to co-manage the Richfield store.
This mix of family, loyal friendship, and their faith is what will continue to drive their business in the future, Porfirio Castillo said.
