Welcoming a new addition to the Puro Tepache Family
You may not be aware, but the Puro Tepache family grew by one on May 10, 2024. Santiago Jose Casasola was born at 3:27 pm, the second son of mine, Co-Founder Emmanuel Casasola. We named him Santiago Jose in memory of my wife’s grandfather (who was called Jim instead of his birth name) and my dad (Jose). Our family has been doing its best to adjust while the expansion at Puro Tepache continues. You’d be surprised at how this little man helped shape the story of our company though!
My wife and I always talked about having lots of kids. Even on our first date (surprisingly) we discussed our individual desire to have 3-4 kids. When we got married in 2012 though, we prioritized travel and career over starting a family but in 2016, our first son Bobby was born. We were over the moon over our boy and we decided “Alright - let’s start our little pack of kids we always wanted”. However, life had other plans.
In the spring of 2017, my dad had a heart attack. I was traveling for work and was in Seattle at the time. I flew back and we decided my career needed a change so I looked for a job with less travel. My dad unfortunately died 10 months later. During this time, the family planning was put on hold as I switched jobs, helped my family out in any way I could, and ultimately grieved the loss of a key figure in my life. A year later in 2019, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer and lost her valiant fight within a year. These two key moments in our life had obviously caused stress, anxiety, and grief. All while we kept in the back of our mind that we had a little boy to raise and a family to continue to build. After all, they would be the legacy that our parents had wanted for us.
It took a while for us to get pregnant with our first son, but we had confidence in all the steps we took that we could duplicate the success. My wife has PCOS but was working with a fantastic doctor that ultimately was able to guide us to our first born. The months and years went by though, and we would start to doubt whether we would ever have another child. We spent a lot of long nights praying and comforting each other. My wife though was determined.
We saw fertility specialists and finally arrived at the conclusion that IVF would be our best bet towards growing our family. I’ll spare the details of how that procedure works but it requires lots of shots (to stimulate egg production) and lots of discomfort. My wife was so strong for us - she really wanted another baby.
Here’s where the story turns to Tepache. My wife is an avid social media junkie and joined a lot of IVF and fertility support groups. There, she read that pineapple seemed to help fertility. So she ate pineapple - ALOT of pineapple. I went into the office and causally told Kevin “with all this pineapple, I should make some Tepache”. Kevin was intrigued by what this was and from there on, he was determined to make and perfect Tepache. We unknowingly were starting the path that would lead us to Puro Tepache!
As I sit here writing, watching my son sleep, I can’t help but think of that journey that brought him here. My hope is that he knows just how truly he is loved and how much we wanted him here. I also hope he is proud of his heritage. That’s a big reason for why Puro Tepache exists - for our Latino community in San Antonio and beyond to be proud of the products they make. We want to uplift our community through the power of their food and beverage. So salud to our people and salud to our familia!
Emmanuel Casasola
CCO, CoFounder Puro Tepache
San Antonio, Texas
