Paleta Planeta would not exist without the parents of Mauricio, Luis and Gabriel Salazar, who allowed their three sons to turn the family’s San Jose home into their first Mexican popsicle factory.
“It is very Silicon Valley to start a company out of a garage,” Luis told San José Spotlight. “We just constantly made batches until we had four 12-cubic-foot freezers in their living room. That’s about when our mom said, ‘What’s going on here?’”
Now celebrating its fourth year and the opening of a downtown storefront adjacent to San Jose City Hall, Paleta Planeta, like many home businesses, was born out of necessity during the early stages of the pandemic when Mauricio’s work at the airport tapered down.
“Ideas started popping into my head,” Mauricio said. “I thought, ‘If you’re going to lose it all, you might as well bet on yourself.”’
He shared some of his ideas with his cousin, Alejandro Guerrero, who had come to America with help from the Salazar family. He was a third-generation ice cream maker from Tocumbo Michoacán, the Mecca of paletas, and invited Luis to Texas to learn the trade.