Mexico chain chooses S.A. for café, U.S. headquarters

A new Cafe Punta del Cielo opened at 140 East Houston two weeks ago. A new Cafe Punta del Cielo opened at 140 East Houston two weeks ago. Photo: John Davenport / San Antonio Express-News Photo: John Davenport / San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Mexico chain chooses S.A. for café, U.S. headquarters 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

A large Mexican café chain, Café Punta del Cielo, has selected San Antonio for its first U.S. franchise, its U.S. headquarters and its jumping-off point for U.S. expansion.

The city has made recruiting more Mexican companies, especially eateries, a goal.

Café Punta del Cielo opened its café two weeks ago downtown near the River Walk at 140 E. Houston St.

That it would set up shop in San Antonio someday was a good bet. Many of the Mexicans who have moved to San Antonio in recent years are familiar with the chain.

The company, after all, operates 184 cafés in 27 Mexican cities, along with others in Madrid and Hong Kong.

But San Antonio also can thank its hordes of tourists and conventioneers as a critical reason for being selected as the chain's U.S. base.

Café Punta del Cielo wants to spread across the United States, so San Antonio was judged the best city in which to start word-of-mouth marketing.

“Tourism is a big issue,” said the chain's main owner, Pablo González Cid, who divides his time between San Antonio and Mexico City, where the company was founded in 2004.

“Downtown San Antonio is always visited by tourists. They can be ambassadors of our concept and our brand” when they go home, González Cid said.

Attracting Mexican-based dining companies to invest in San Antonio is a City Hall goal.

Last August, Mayor Julián Castro was the host to a luncheon in a swank private dining club near Mexico City's Zócalo.

About a dozen Mexico City restaurateurs attended to hear from San Antonio restaurant operators, including La Gloria's Johnny Hernandez and Los Barrios restaurant chain's Louis Barrios.

More may be coming, said Raul Rodriguez, foreign direct investment specialist at the Free Trade Alliance.

Rodriguez returned Thursday from a Mexico City trade mission that is part of the alliance's Export Leaders program.

At a business matchmaking session held by the city's Casa San Antonio trade promotion office in the Mexican capital, 40 Mexico City business executives were expected but 67 showed up, Rodriguez said.

One, an owner of two Mexican restaurant chains, told Rodriguez he is interested in opening his first U.S. restaurants in San Antonio and New York City.

“I'm looking at 70 emails right now,” Rodriguez said. “Most are clients from this trip. They see San Antonio as an excellent place to do business. We'll start bringing them up here.”

Trade mission groups from Mexico to San Antonio also are coming, Rodriguez said. “We'll going to be pretty busy from here on out,” Rodriguez said.

“San Antonio is charming with its Mexican culture. There are a lot of people from Mexico there who know the brand. We are betting on the numbers of Latin people there and the local culture,” González Cid said.

Another factor in selecting San Antonio was its proximity to Mexico and the border-entry city of Laredo.

“We import everything through Laredo,” González Cid said, listing coffee, machines and pre-packaged coffee and chocolate products that are sold at the cafés mainly for consumption outside the shops.

The first San Antonio Café Punta del Cielo shop occupies space previously used by a Subway sandwich shop. The Schrader Group assisted in establishing the company's first site.

González Cid said he hopes to start two to three more San Antonio cafés over the next year as he plots the chain's U.S. expansion. “We are looking at the whole country,” he said.

“We are starting with a staff of eight people,” Gonzalez Cid said.

As the chain expands in the United States, it could double or maybe reach 20, he added.

dhendricks@express-news.net