When Henry and Gino Santos arrived in Miami from Cuba with their family, their father told them that they "didn't come to this country to waste time." In 1989, the brothers, with this phrase in mind, took it upon themselves to help small restaurants and bars serve the cocktails customers want on their night out.
Henry, who sat down with The Latin Times for an interview in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, talked about the effect his father had on him and his brother, the challenges of being a Latino businessman in the United States, and the founding of his company, Premium Blend.
The Cuban-born entrepreneur says that his father repeated his "mantra... until the day he died." His father, Oreste Santos, a singer/songwriter, brought Henry from Cuba to Hialeah, Florida, when he was 9 years old. When Henry married his wife, he says the only advice his parents gave him was, "As long as you have three months' worth of expenses in the bank, you are safe. I think I overdid it."
And overdo it he did, as he and his brother built a business empire catering to struggling small businesses and providing them with the tools to succeed.
Establishments like bars and restaurants need to secure licenses from the government to have the ability to serve food and drinks. These licenses are often expensive, especially those involving alcohol. On top of the funds spent to establish a business, the prices of a liquor license are often unaffordable for places that seek to serve spirits.
However, a beer and wine license is much less costly due to their lower alcohol content being seen as less dangerous by the government than liquors like whiskey, rum, or vodka. However, the delicious cocktails like margaritas, daiquiris, and martinis that people go to bars to have often exclusively rely on liquor for their alcoholic base.
The Santos brothers took notice of this, watching their father struggle to open his own nightclub, and realized that there was a better way to help people like their dad. Premium Blend, sells wine-based liquor substitutes so that establishments with only a beer and wine license can sell these beloved cocktails without breaking the bank for a liquor license.
He explained creating liquor substitutes is "actually a very simple process. The basics of it is a neutral-tasting wine... The industry has a product called 'other than standard orange wine,' and it was developed for diluting or cutting the liquors to save tax dollars...So we found this neutral-tasting wine without any flavors and we added natural rum flavor, just like the stuff you make rum cake from...It's an extract."
However, the road to success was not without its challenges. Henry recalls being discriminated against for his heritage in business circles. He remembers that, "Every time I would go into a market, I would always have to work only with the Hispanics or the minority.... You know, like go sell your own people."
However, Henry saw it as an opportunity to get to know more of his client base in the small business sectors. He would recall that "I went in with that big company representative, and they would usually put me with the sales marketing or district manager to go visit... all the Hispanic little stores and little restaurants and everything. It would be like coming home, because every time I would walk in and start speaking Spanish to those guys, they would hug me."
However, he also stresses that he doesn't consider them "hardships." He adds that he "never felt limited in this country, I felt challenged...To me, it was an inspiration. I could do it. I knew that I could do it...I want people to rise. I don't want people to walk around with a chip on their shoulder...The only way you're going to get success is by believing that you are Superman."
You can learn more about Premium Blend and learn about the Santos brothers at their website here.
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