- That's an important connection to make in a community.

Well, Flora, I wanna talk about the connections between festivals and small businesses.

I wanna ask you about your experience as a small business owner and actually the start of your business and how that was connected with the Heritage Festival in Shenandoah.

- Well, we started by selling tamales and when I say we, I mean my husband's family and I now back in Mexico, they're from Mexico and they did a lot of different businesses.

They sold food and a lot of other commercial ones.

So we started selling tamales.

I said, hey, I was like, why don't I sell tamales?

You guys make tamales, I'll sell them for you.

So I did with coworkers and friends.

It was a big hit.

Like there was people who didn't even know what a tamale was, but they tried it.

And then there was a Heritage Day Festival.

So the church asked many of the members, they want a stand to represent Mexico who would like to participate.

So we were one of the participants and we have participated ever since.

And we saw that there was so much love for our food.

People loved it.

Like we would sell out all the time.

We'd always sell out.

So eventually we're like, well, hey, maybe we should think about opening up a business.

We were selling tamales and when I sold them, they'd be like, do you guys have other food you could bring?

So I took orders and there was a property that they had closed.

It was a business.

They used to sell burgers and stuff and it was up for sale.

So we're like, ah, let's look into it.

Well, we did.

We purchased a building and it took us a little bit, but at the end of the year, we opened our restaurant, La Casita de Familia.

It's a family business.

So we thought that would be the best name, La Casita de Familia, which means the little house of the family.

So it's a small restaurant, but let me tell you, I don't know how much, how you guys can even get so much food out of that small kitchen.

I don't know how we do it, but you know, I say, you know, God helped us.

We got our restaurant blessed the day before Thanksgiving of 2005.

Father Winnie came and he blessed the restaurant and we opened the very next day on Thanksgiving day.

And we've been open since then.

So we're open now 19 years.

- 19 years.

- Yes.

- Has there been parallels between the growth of the community, festivals, events, and growth of your restaurant?

- Yes.

We have the Heritage Day now has been combined with Kielbasa Festival.

After COVID, they combined the two events, but I mean, Shenandoah just itself is a diverse community.

It was made up of immigrants, of Lithuanians, Polish, Italians, so many more.

I can't even say all of them now.

We have Mexican communities coming in, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Honduran.

It keeps growing.

We have so much diversity there.

We have so many other restaurants growing.

Our parade keeps getting bigger and bigger.

We have people from India now that are participating, Jamaica, so it keeps growing.

And a lot of those bring their food in.

And we've noticed there's more and more restaurants opening up from different cultures because they see people try the food in Shenandoah.

They always say, "If there's so much culture "there in Shenandoah, that parade itself, "it just represents it."

And I always tell people, I was like, "You know, you go to Shenandoah, buy kielbasa, "and then you go eat Mexican food."

And of course, you all know Mrs. T's is there.

So I mean, there's so much in Shenandoah.

It's a very small town, but so culturally diverse.

And I mean, just these small events have boosted us because we have so many people that come from out of town.

They come for the kielbasa festival.

We remain open.

Our restaurant, it doesn't open early in the day.

We open around like two o'clock in the afternoon before the festival is over.

And we have people that come and dine in after the festival who didn't get a bite to eat 'cause they were trying other food, but then they come and they stay and eat at our restaurant.

- Stay after the festival.