Estrellita’s Snacks is a second generation family owned Salvadoran food company specializing in Pupusas, Tamales, and Tostadas. The company was born in San Francisco’s Mission District where Maria del Carmen who founded the business began selling her freshly fried plantain and yucca chips to local business owners and families that missed the taste and crunch of tostadas from El Salvador.
Over the years Estrellita’s Snacks has grown and today our family runs the business together. We participate in a number of events around the city. You can find our farmer’s market stand at The Heart of the City on Wednesday in the civic center plaza. You can enjoy our pupusas on Saturdays at the Alemany Farmers Market. Our chips are sold in stores up and down the Mission District. We offer our catering services all over the Bay Area and look forward to serving you at our upcoming kiosk at the La Cocina Municipal Market place in the Tenderloin early 2020.
My mother, Maria del Carmen Flores was the oldest of 12 children she was born and raised in El Salvador and started selling food tostadas, pupusas, fresh fruit with chili and salt alongside her mother when she was six years old. She says this food is in her blood. Over the next 30 years she lived all over Central America, mastering the local cuisine in El Salvador, Guatemala and Oaxaca, Mexico and selling snacks on the street to make a living.
When she arrived in San Francisco, she continued to do what she’d always done best making pupusas, tostadas, tamales and aguas frescas and selling them to passersby. Only this time, the $20 she used to purchase the plantains, oil and salt for her tostadas turned into $300 in her pocket. Soon thereafter, Estrellita’s Snacks was born.
My mother joined the La Cocina Incubator program in 2005, at the beginning, my brother and I were her helpers with time our kids now young adults started to help too. Today the company she created, which she named after me and also means star in Spanish is still going strong. Our family continues to build on the legacy that my mother started and she continues to delight in knowing that her passion lives on.