Swole-sa™
Swole-sa™ is my vision, my brand, and my current endeavor. The seed for it was planted years ago when my sisters and I encouraged our mom to share her incredible food and salsa that everyone loved. But as an immigrant woman, she never felt confident enough to start her own business. That moment stayed with me. I wanted to help, however I realized if I was going to step up to the plate, I couldn’t just sell her recipes and call it a day. Whatever I created had to come from within me. It had to be something deeply inspired by my mom, my roots, and the things that make me, me.
One day at the gym, the radical idea struck as I was purchasing some creatine: “Throw some protein in that thang!” After some serious R&D testing using every kind of protein I could think of, I finally landed on a plant-based option that kept the salsa delicious and made it accessible to all. From there, Swole-sa™ was born.
I’ve guided every aspect of its identity: from logo development and packaging design, to brand voice and launch strategy, to the innovative recipes and flavors themselves. What you see here isn’t just a brand, it’s a reflection of my journey: honoring where I come from, building what doesn’t exist, and proving that even something as simple as salsa can redefine how we eat and connect to heritage; to our familia.
R&D
The beginning was humbling, to say the least. The first batches were awful. Honestly, I would’ve argued they weren’t edible but technically, they were… just very gross. The texture was all over the place, ranging from a thick tomato smoothie (the pale jar on the left) to spicy chunks with a grainy finish (the jar on the right).
Mind you, I had never attempted anything like this before, and there was nothing on the market I could really use as a reference. I had to wing the entire process.
That first batch was made in February 2025, and the refinement process continued all the way through June 2025.
The Breakthrough
Finally, in June, I had a breakthrough while out on a trail run with friends. I had been trying so hard to make a salsa people already recognized, when in reality, I was creating something entirely new.
I was forcing two different shapes together and not letting the original idea take the form it needed in order to work. As soon as I realized that, everything changed.
I started dissecting the salsa recipe I enjoyed most and asking myself: What do I actually like about it? What makes it so striking? What makes it different?
The salsa I was analyzing was my Habanero Passionfruit flavor.
From that internal Q&A, while still on the run, I narrowed down the process I would use for all of my salsa recipes. The only thing left to do was get home and start cooking to see if this new approach would actually work.
Now We're Cooking
That evening, after I realized the new method actually worked, I celebrated the only way that made sense: Dino nuggets with my little sister. Then I got right back to work. The recipes were finally there. The flavor had landed. The process made sense. For the first time, this thing felt real. But now came the bigger question: what kind of brand was this going to be?
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I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want generic. I didn’t want another health brand trying to look clean and safe and forgettable. I wanted something with pulse. Something that felt like me. Fun. Daring. Bold. A little unhinged. Health-forward, but still deeply committed to the finer things in life, like tacos. I wanted it to be bilingual too, because I am. Because I’m Mexican-American. Because Spanglish is how I grew up, and still how the world sounds in my head. It’s how my humor works. It’s how flavor works. It’s how home works.
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I wanted the brand to feel iconic, but I was still searching for the image that could hold all of that. Then it hit me. A flexing chile pepper. It was funny. It was bold. It made no apologies. It carried the spirit of the product and the attitude behind it.
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The second I saw it in my mind, I knew. That was the brand.
Ok, This Is Real Now
Once the recipes were dialed and the brand had a face, everything started moving. I applied to a food incubation program expecting a quick 45-minute conversation, but it turned into a two-hour deep dive with 12 industry professionals, all of them pulling at the idea from different angles and all of them seeing the potential.
By the end of it, they told me no. Not because the idea wasn’t good, but because, in their words, I didn’t need incubation, I needed a commercial kitchen. I needed to start making product. At first, it felt like a setback, but it was actually one of the clearest signals I could have received.
That “no” gave me exactly what I needed to hear. It forced my hand in the best way and pushed me to stop circling the idea and commit to it fully. So I did. I made Swole-sa official, formed the LLC, handled the legal paperwork, started building the website, shaped the social presence, and found a commercial kitchen in the heart of Oakland. Just like that, the project started crossing over from concept to reality.
The shift was undeniable. What began as rough home kitchen test batches became real product, real conversations, and real demand. People started telling me they wanted to buy it, and that changed everything. The journey is still unfolding, and I’m learning at every step. Some lessons came from wins, others came from pressure, mistakes, and figuring things out in real time, but all of it has made the vision sharper.
What excites me most is that this idea was never supposed to become this big. It started as an experiment, a strange idea, a challenge I gave myself. Now it has a name, a voice, a process, a growing audience, and a life of its own. I get to be at the center of it all, wearing every hat: founder, creative director, copywriter, cook, builder, problem-solver, and storyteller. I’m a dreamer who decided to go all in just to see how far a “silly” idea could go, and I feel deeply inspired, grateful, and like I’m only at the beginning.
