From gift shop to grocery store

It took Dean Miller a week to go from “non-essential” to “essential.”

Dean got a helping hand from rice, refried beans, and salsa.

“What’s more essential,” he asks, “than beans and rice?”

Dean runs the Rancho Deluxe gift shop on the Square. He remembers the day in March when stores were ordered to shut down to stop the spread of COVID-19.

“A sheriff’s deputy came in and asked what I had that made me an essential business,” Dean recalls. “I said, ‘I don’t know, man.’ ” He looked around and pointed out that he sold coffee and vanilla. The deputy wasn’t buying that. It had to be in bulk Dean was informed.

So the store closed for a week. During that time Dean remembered the Goya foods distribution center he passed many times in Brookshire, outside of Houston. He set up an account with Goya, bought groceries and hauled them back to Wimberley in his truck and picked up some shelves at Home Depot. Rancho Deluxe became a grocery store.

“There’s no money in groceries,” says Dean. “But my goal was not the money. It was staying open.

“I was here in the late winter and early spring just watching the dust blow by — but I was open.”

New Jersey-based Goya is the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the United States. It produces more than 2,500 products and employs 4,000 people at fa-cilities across the country, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Spain.

Goya Central

H-E-B and Brookshire Brothers markets stock a number of Goya products, but, it’s safe to say, Rancho Deluxe is Goya Central. He has two large displays with Goya products nestled in among the imported Mexican art and handicrafts that the shop is known for.

“I’m happy with the products and happy with the company,” says Dean, who makes frequent trips to the Goya distribution center and hauls the products back himself to avoid delivery costs.

In addition to allowing the store to stay open, the Goya products produced a couple more positive consequences.

At a time when big grocery stores were making people wait outside or were crowded with frantic shoppers, Rancho Deluxe provided a calm shopping experience. Dean would even pack up orders and set them on the rock ledge outside so customers wouldn’t have to come inside the store.

“What I had was older people and older couples coming in early in the morning and they wouldn’t be jostled and didn’t have to stand on dots,” says Dean. “Meeting so many neat older folks was so cool.”

In a store that’s aimed primarily at tourists, the food sales helped build a base of local customers. Dean spread the word through local social media pages.

Since becoming a food retailer, Dean also became involved with local food banks, especially the Amigos de Jesus Ministry.

There’s a donation jar near the cash register that is crammed with bills. When the jar is filled, Dean buys an assortment of Goya products and delivers it to the food banks. For every 10 items sold, Dean donates one item to the food banks.

Unexpected benefit

Goya has chipped in a couple of impressive gift baskets that Dean auctioned off. One woman put in a winning bid of $125 for one of the baskets and then told Dean to keep it and raffle off the basket again. He did.

“Being able to work with these bread baskets has been really rewarding for me,” Dean says.

Rancho Deluxe got an unexpected boost when the chief executive officer of Goya, Bob Unanue, attended a conference on hispanic prosperity at the White House. Unanue had positive words to say about President Trump. The president’s opponents were outraged and called for a boycott of Goya products. However, Goya products started flying off the shelves as the boycott quickly became known as a “buy-cott” by Trump supporters. “I had Goya products on the shelves for months before that,” says Dean. “But those products were moving, I’ll say that.”

Goya products aside, Rancho Deluxe is mostly devoted to art imported from Mexico. Big sellers include wooden bowls and rustic picture frames.

Dean started visiting Mexico when he was 19. It didn’t take long to for him to discover beautiful handmade pottery and other works of art. In his previous job as a corrections officer he worked four days on and had four days off. That allowed plenty of time for frequent trips to Mexico. He learned to speak Spanish.

Dean supplied the previous owners of Rancho Deluxe with imported handicrafts. When the store came on the market in 2012, he snatched it up.

Rancho Deluxe is located at 14010 Ranch Road 12 and can be reached at 512- 847-9570. The Rancho Deluxe Wimberley Facebook page provides a good snapshot of what’s available.

Rancho Deluxe is located at 14010 Ranch Road 12 and can be reached at 512- 847-9570. The Rancho Deluxe Wimberley Facebook page provides a good snapshot of what’s available.

“Goya allowed me to keep the shop open during some bad times. It allowed me to pay the bills and get people in the shop when few people were out buying things,” says Dean.