Entrepreneurs tapping into Latino market

Hugh McDonald realized the potential of Utah's Latino market a decade ago when he started a door-to-door meat business in Provo.

"I learned something," McDonald said. "Hispanics consume about 10 times the amount of meat as non-Hispanics."

So he stopped going door to door and opened one of the region's first meat markets geared to the small but rapidly growing Latino population. McDonald said he was one of three such markets along the Wasatch Front. Now he's one of about 120.

They are all trying to tap into a growing demographic that has money to spend. Latinos now account for more than $2 billion in purchasing power in Utah, said Joe Reyna, Ogden deputy mayor and board chairman-elect of the Utah Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

And the customer base just keeps growing. Utah's Latino population, at 84,597 in 1990 is now estimated at 229,386, or nearly 10 percent of the state's population, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey.

Changing cultural landscape

Today's cultural landscape is very different from what Lorena Riffo-Jensen remembers when she first arrived in Utah from Chile in 1980.

In junior high, Riffo-Jensen said she always looked forward to bumping into her sister, "the only other person I could communicate with.

"Utah and our country is a very different place than what it used to be," she said. "You always see that there is a huge demand in terms of different products targeting the market and yet so few fully understand it."

A lack of sophisticated marketing aimed at Latinos gave Riffo-Jensen, who has served as state director of Hispanic affairs, an idea. She and Vanessa Di Palma started DPR Communications, a marketing company that is focused on reaching the Latino community.

Riffo-Jensen said many companies make the mistake of "treating that market as if it were all one market without understanding the diversity within."

Di Palma, who emigrated to New York from Uruguay as a teenager, said: "I may be an Americanized child; my mom is not an Americanized mom."

There are new immigrants who speak no English. There are second, third and fourth generations who speak only English. There are low-income laborers. There are affluent professionals. The list goes on.

According to census ACS data, about 75 percent of Utah's Latinos are of Mexican descent. Most of the other Latinos are from South American countries such as Chile, Peru and Venezuela, Reyna said.