Shop Small is a monthly series highlighting small business owners from diverse backgrounds. This series aims to go deeper than your typical product roundup, diving into the inspirational stories behind some of our favorite brands. By taking a behind-the-scenes look at how their shops came to be and highlighting the products they (and their shoppers!) love, we hope to put a deserving spotlight on these marginalized business owners.
Scott Hattis and Kenny Luna have been friends since college. Although they come from different backgrounds — Luna is Dominican and Peruvian while Hattis married into a Dominican family later in life — they both share a love and passion for the Latino community.
"One thing that is at the heart of our friendship and relationship with my wife is food and culture and how important they were to us in our homes," says Hattis.
And so Loisa was a born. The mission of the New York City-based brand is to elevate Latin flavor by eliminating artificial ingredients. However, the most important part of Loisa isn't just their high-quality pantry and kitchenware items — it's the community those products serve.
From the early days of the business to their future aspirations for the brand, we spoke with Hattis and Luna about their journey building Loisa from the ground up.
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What inspired you to start Loisa?
Scott Hattis: The inspiration for Loisa came out of a need Kenny and I realized we shared after starting families. When looking at what was available in stores, nothing felt like it was meeting us where we were at both in terms of the product, ingredients and quality, but also as a brand that would bring a feeling of celebration and pride into our homes about that sense of heritage.
Kenny Luna: One of the challenges that's been happening for people like myself is our expectations in terms of food quality and ingredients have gotten a lot higher now, and there just aren't brands that are meeting us where we want to be. A lot of those second- and third-generation Latinos have a sense of nostalgia for the foods they grew up eating, but now that they want healthier ingredients and recipes, those foods aren't meeting them where they want to go.
What does the name Loisa mean to you?
SH: Loisa is a homage to the Lower East Side neighborhood in Manhattan in Spanglish. It's Loisaida. It's where I lived with my family when we started the business and did a lot of the early work.
KL: There's a certain dialect you have as a Spanglish speaker. It's a mix of both languages and pronunciation. So, we thought it was just a way to make it very warm and welcoming to those people.
Loisa is rooted in uplifting and serving the Latin community. What does that community mean to you?
SH: Community is at the center of everything we do. It started naturally when we came up with the idea and began this company. You sense the energy coming back towards us from the community immediately. It was a theory, but then it became a reality that, that would be how this company grew. From a grassroots perspective early on building community online to today, where we're developing new products with our community's input – it's something we talk about every day. It's something we prioritize and invest in.
And influencer content is such an important part of our plan, and we see that as a community effort as well. We're working with Latin chefs and creators. We're a brand they connect with and it's really a through line across the business.
When starting the brand, what was most important to you?
KL: When we were starting the brand in the early days, the most important thing for us, our North Star, was making sure we were as truthful and as authentic as possible about what these foods are. When you look at other brands out there, you know what they're making is so derivative of the traditional ways these foods were being made.
Part of what was exciting about building this brand is, as Scott mentioned, we're both part of multicultural households, so obviously it needs to be welcoming to someone like myself and Scott's wife. We're born into the Latin community, but Scott married into it. My wife married into it. We wanted to build a brand that welcomed everyone. Just because you don't know some of these recipes or dishes, doesn't mean it's not for you.
Providing high-quality Latin flavor to your community is at the core of the brand. What differentiates Loisa from its competitors?
SH: We use entirely natural ingredients. We've never used fillers. We've never used artificial flavors, colors, dyes, anything, because the truth is, they're not needed, and they never were. We often hear questions like, "Are you making a better version of what these big brands have made?" But the reality is, they've made an artificial version of what was a very natural base of flavor. And so we're sort of bringing it back a bit.
A portion of your sales is donated to community organizations. What inspires you to give back?
SH: The intention behind our program is to support organizations that, as small and growing businesses, our contributions actually might matter. We see our platform as an asset and elevating these organizations through our social and email worlds is hopefully beneficial to them.
KL: As founders, there are certain companies we admire, and this concept of giving back is part of their identity. For instance, when we started the company, we were reading Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard from Patagonia. And that's part of the company's ethos – you give back. Have that be part of the identity of the company. If you grow with that, then it becomes so foundational that it never goes away.
What are you most excited about for the future of Loisa?
SH: Building broader accessibility for these foods and flavors. We recently launched in a range of retailers, including Sprouts and Whole Foods both nationwide. And it's obviously great for the business, but it's even better for the culture.
KL: A lot of people in the Latino community don't shop in natural grocery stores. Sometimes it's a choice, and sometimes it's not. What's exciting about the future is, as we scale, the unit cost to manufacture stuff will drop. This will allow us to reduce the prices, which will then make this product more accessible to the larger Latino demographic, because there's a spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds here. And again, not everyone can shop at Whole Foods, and that's just the reality. So I think that's something we're really excited about.
Laura Millar (she/her) is the assistant lifestyle editor for Good Housekeeping, where she covers home design. Prior to joining Good Housekeeping in 2024, she wrote for NBC's TODAY.com, where she covered everything from entertainment news to pop culture updates.
