Customers find guidance as well as groceries at Todos Supermarket

by Heather B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
May 2007

One-stop shopping takes on new meaning at Todos Supermarket. In addition to finding Hispanic foods, customers can cash checks, talk to a real estate agent, apply for a mortgage, get an insurance policy, have a document notarized or have a letter translated. “One of my clients once said that our business card was the most important one in her wallet,” Carlos Castro Sr. says with a laugh.

Castro started Todos Supermarket, now 15,000 square feet, with his wife, Gladis, in Woodbridge in 1990. The couple has since opened a smaller Todos Market and a Todos Gift Shop in Alexandria. Their nontraditional way of catering to customers enabled Todos to grow more than 151 percent from 2002 to 2005, making it the fastest growing retail/wholesale business in the 2007 Fantastic 50. In 2005, the company had revenue of $12.4 million. More than $10.5 million of that total came from grocery sales, with the rest stemming from financial services and other services.

“We’re doing great, but we could be doing even better if we had a larger space,” says Castro. He rents his stores but has a long-term goal of buying a shopping plaza that would house a 50,000-square-foot-plus Todos Supermarket.

In the meantime, Castro is offering a variety of services. Last year, he opened a Todos Financial Center just three doors down from his Woodbridge site to house Todos Realty and Todos Insurance (created six years ago in partnership with a Nationwide Insurance agent). The financial center also rents space to Pinnacle Financial Co., which offers mortgage services.

This year, Todos will open a second, 15,000-square-foot Todos Supermarket in Dumfries. Castro says the store will carry mainstream American food in addition to Hispanic groceries. “We want it to be a true community store, so Americans can shop here for their needs as well,” says Castro, noting that his two oldest children, Carlos Jr. and Gina, are also heavily involved in the business.

He is quick to point out that, despite the company’s recent growth spurt, success for Todos did not come quickly. He and his wife began Todos Supermarket just before a recession in the early 1990s. At the time, they knew little about the business or the unique needs of their target customers.

“We learned more and more as we went along, and we definitely started paying more attention to what our customers really needed and wanted in a grocery store,” Castro explains. The store was redesigned to make it more user-friendly, and a strong advertising strategy started attracting more customers. “That helped begin to turn us around,” he says.

In the early years, though, Castro started preparing income tax returns for customers to improve his cash flow.

Then he got a license to sell real estate and certification to provide notary public services. “I was just trying to do what I could to support my family,” he recalls. “But without knowing it, I was adding value to my store. Now we have become a place where people come for guidance as well as groceries.”

Today Todos is thriving because of the rapid growth of Northern Virginia’s Hispanic population and an increasing interest in Hispanic food among the general population. Castro notes that those factors have attracted more competition to the area, including a store owned by Washington-area chain Americana Grocery just down the street in Woodbridge. “We were pretty nervous about that,” Castro admits. “But it hasn’t made a dent in our sales so far.”

A major reason for the company’s ongoing growth, says Castro, is that he understands his customers and is willing to do whatever it takes to meet their needs. He makes sure that the stores stock meats, fruits, cheese, flour and spices that remind customers of their homelands. “It’s the little things that count,” he says.