Mi Tiendita Chapina began the way many great community stores do: small, and deeply personal. Our family's roots trace back to Guatemala, where our grandfather ran a handful of neighborhood tiendas. When financial hardship forced him to close those doors, he rebuilt in Los Angeles, and years later, our father and uncle opened the first Tiendita Chapina on 6th Street and Bonnie Brea, in the heart of LA's Guatemalan community.
For over 20 years, we've grown alongside the families we serve. From a single mini-market, to a full family of locations across Los Angeles offering groceries, international shipping, money transfers, OTC pharmacy essentials, and our own home-baked Guatemalan bread. Along the way, we never lost sight of where we came from: since 2016, our family has run Proyecto SEE, sending aid and sponsoring students' educations in communities across Guatemala.
Where we are now
Today, Mi Tiendita Chapina operates five locations across Los Angeles, each one a full-service hub for the Central American community: grocery and retail, money transfer and bill-pay services, a bakery, and shipping services that connect families here to loved ones in Guatemala and across the region.
What began as one store has grown into a family-run platform of interconnected businesses, each one built to solve a real problem our customers told us they had.
That pattern: listen, build, expand, is still how we operate. It's also how a single mini-market became a multi-location company with five retail locations, a licensed money-services operation, an international shipping and logistics business.
Who runs it
Mi Tiendita Chapina is family-owned and family-led, built from decades of trust with the community we serve.
Beyond the immediate leadership team, this is a company where extended family plays real operating roles: a structure that keeps the business rooted in the community it serves while it scales.
Our mission
To be the most trusted name in Central American retail and community services in the United States, bringing the goods, services, and connections our community relies on into one place, without ever asking people to leave their culture at the door.
Beyond the business
Since 2016, the Velasquez family has run Proyecto SEE, a philanthropic initiative that sends aid boxes to families in Guatemala and sponsors students' education through college. This non-profit predates most of the business lines it now sits alongside, and it reflects the same instinct that built the company: when you see a need in the community, you meet it.
Where we're headed
Mi Tiendita Chapina is still, at its core, a family business. But the plan has always been bigger than five storefronts. We're building toward a full-scale ethnic retail platform serving Central American and broader Latino communities across the United States, combining retail, financial services, logistics, and community investment under one trusted name.
