H‑E‑B truly represents what Texas is about. Since day one, H-E-B has always showed their support for Texans and Texas based products!
Quest for Texas Best is a signature program for H-E-B's Primo Picks brand, which labels best-in-store products that are all unique, delicious, new and all from small Texas businesses. Being chosen from over 800 entries to be a finalist in HEB Quest for Texas Best is a big deal. It’s a chance for companies to pitch their product and their story to the most sought after Buyers in the Lone Star State.
3SonsFoods entered into Quest in 2018, and did not make the cut. However, we got a personal call from HEB encouraging us to apply again in 2019 and that they would be watching our growth throughout the year. Well, that wasn’t too hard, in October of 2018, our Diablo Fans requested that HEB carry our product and we started direct delivering to HEB Pin Oak, then HEB Grand Parkway, then HEB Bunker Hill and by the time the HEB Quest for Texas Best competition rolled around we were DSD delivering to 12 HEB stores throughout Houston. Yes, we backed up the old mom-obile along side the 18 wheelers and delivered cases of Diablo Verde, stocked the shelves ourselves and merchandised every week.
The contest was amazing! Being chosen was sooooo cool!! I had promised my sons that we would be on the shelves of HEB and this was our shot to expand from 12 stores to 275 HEB grocery stores and most importantly, be in their warehouse and give my gas guzzler a break! We practiced and practice our presentation every day for 6 weeks. We worked as team. George, was our front guy, Luke and I were the goofy ones with all the stupid jokes and a choreographed dance and of course Ayden was the straight guy. We had every detail of our presentation, even the eye rolls, planned and rehearsed until we could do it blindfolded. We worked as a team. The presentation was awesome. And when the CFO came up to us personally after our presentation to ask us more questions it was evident we would place in the top 4. And just a few hours later, we not only made the top 4, we won Grand Champion for 2019 HEB Quest for Texas Best!!!!!
Has it changed our lives?!……..well, 6 months later we heard “lights, camera, action………”