Who owns el paso

Ironically, Old El Paso Foods rose as a recognized, national brand decades ago when the introduction of mass canning signalled an important change in the family eating style. Today, the Anthony division has succumbed in part from another shift in consumer shopping and eating habits.

Notorious for its salsa shoot-out commercials on television several years ago with Pace Picante Sauce in which the cowboy was ready to empty his six-shooter over salsa made in New York City, Old El Paso has since lost the duel. While the company had 50 percent of the U. Business Reporter web site. Once a locally-owned company, the Old El Paso Foods Anthony plant was sold off to large corporate outfits several times in recent years.

The company, in fact, played a pivotal role in the chile boom of recent decades, contracting large amounts of the hot stuff for its processing lines. Although General Mills spokesman Forsythe said he still expected the Minneapolis-based firm to contract chiles from New Mexico growers for processing elsewhere, some Anthony-area farmers reported that they had either already quit contracting for the company or had abandoned chile growing entirely.

Mary Helen Llanez, who operates the Ric-Llan farm with her husband on the New Mexico side of Anthony, blamed, in large part, the availability of cheaper Mexican-produced chile for causing her family to drastically reduce the amount of chile acreage they cultivate.

Click here to subscribe to elpasotimes. More: El Paso's nine shopping centers made buying necessities easier. In , James A. Dick, J. L Dodson, Harry C. Ferris and George E. Burns bought the Mountain Pass cannery. In those areas, operations continued to market their products under their established brand names of "Mountain Pass" and "Valley.

In , Mountain Pass announced that operations would move to Anthony, Texas, after the end of the canning season. The cuisine is now so pervasive, and travel so much more common, that the spread of Mexican food is less dependent on the movement of people. They have fresh chicken, fresh veggies and they cook with oils not butters. Packages of Old El Paso taco shells now proclaim they are made with just three ingredients: corn flour, palm oil and salt. This labeling shift is a nod to skeptical consumers who want more transparency about the ingredients that are in their food.

The Old El Paso team members often visit homes, come into kitchens and observe how people eat. They are looking for where things go wrong and then imagining ways to solve that problem. On one visit, year-old La Berge saw a mom stuffing and wrapping flour-tortilla tacos for all her children. To remedy this common problem, Old El Paso introduced taco bowls, which are soft, flour tortillas with walls that sit upright and can be filled with toppings.

Now a commonplace cuisine in nearly every corner of America, Mexican is a lesser-known food in Europe, Canada and Australia. In the United States, consumers eat Mexican food at home 60 times a year, compared to four or five times in Europe. But interest is growing, and General Mills hopes to be the one to introduce the cuisine elsewhere. The brand has 72 percent of the Mexican food market in France.

The company tries to listen to what consumers want and create products that meet them where they are at. And why do they love Mexican food? Because of the flavors. Kristen Leigh Painter covers the food industry for the Star Tribune. She previously covered growth and development for the paper.

Prior to that, Painter was a business reporter at the Denver Post, covering airlines and aerospace. She frequently writes about sustainable food production, consumer food trends and airlines. Home All Sections. Log In Welcome, User. Coronavirus Minneapolis St. Paul Duluth St.