Pinole Blue’s journey began in a dorm room while Eddie Sandoval pursued his business studies. Eddie's family, hailing from Chihuahua, Mexico, would always bring back pinole—an ancient recipe of dry roasted organic blue corn—from their family trips. This gave Eddie an idea. While in school, Eddie would undertake making his idea a reality: To bring pinole to U.S. markets with a mission to give back to the indigenous Tarahumara community in Chihuahua.

With half a ton of organic blue corn to start, he founded Pinole Blue and, soon after, won a venture competition hosted by his university. From there, his business quickly expanded to include other pinole-based mixes, cookies, and tortillas.

One challenge Eddie faced early on was marketing pinole as an ingredient in the United States. “Pinole is not a very common staple,” he says. “Even within the Hispanic community, a lot of [the younger generation], they don’t really know what it is.” The company had always relied on social media to get their name out there, and once they started making tortillas, they also began sharing the ancient processes, traditions, and personal stories that were connected to pinole. As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they found themselves going viral on TikTok. “We would get so many messages like, ‘Oh my gosh, my grandma says she hasn’t had a tortilla like that in forever, we’d love to try them,’” he says. 

Almost six years since Pinole Blue started, Eddie and the founding team continue to be passionate about their company mission of “honoring the tradition of ancient culinary recipes, connecting cultures through heritage ingredients and providing a taste of history.” And as Eddie says, at Pinole Blue, “The grind never stops.”