While the signs outside haven’t been changed yet, the former Municipal Liquor Store building in Elmore is now officially the home of C&E Mini Market, owned by Nancy Arriaza. The convenience store held its grand opening event on June 14, and has already built up a strong customer base.

The former municipal liquor store in Elmore has officially been bought and rebranded as the C&E Mini Market, and owner Nancy Arriaza has traveled a long and winding road to get here.

“I’m actually not local to the area – I moved here from Las Vegas, Nevada,” Arriaza shares. “I lived there for 24 years before my divorce, and then I moved to El Paso, Texas for a few years until I finally moved here to Minnesota.”

Arriaza initially didn’t move to Minnesota to start her own business; rather, she was looking for a place with a lower cost of living.

“I first heard about Minnesota through my step-brother, who works for FedEx,” Arriaza explains. “He said that it was cheaper to live up here, so I decided to give it a chance. I toured a lot of towns in southern Minnesota – Bricelyn, Albert Lea, a few others – but I fell in love with Elmore, and decided that this is where I wanted to be.”

After moving to Minnesota and having a house built in Elmore, Arriaza turned her attention to the needs of her new community. Specifically, she noticed that Elmore only had one restaurant, and she had the idea to open another one to help fill that niche.

“I saw the liquor store here in Elmore, and I thought that it would be the perfect spot for a restaurant,” Arriaza recalls. “But at the time, the building wasn’t for sale yet, and there really wasn’t anywhere else in town that was a good spot.”

Seeing that there weren’t any opportunities for her in Minnesota, Arriaza moved back to Las Vegas, but she still kept her ears open for news from Minnesota. Fortunately, nine months later, a call came from her sister that convinced her to come back.

“I got a phone call from my sister, and she told me that the liquor store in Elmore that I had been looking at was for rent or sale,” Arriaza says. “I knew right away that I had to move back to Minnesota.”

Arriaza staked her claim on the newly-vacant liquor store immediately upon her return to Minnesota, but while she waited to hear back on the rental process from the city, she found employment at Sunflower Community Assisted Living, where she worked for three months.

“I realized during my time working at the assisted living center that there were a lot of elderly people living in Elmore, and there weren’t a lot of places for them to get food,” Arriaza remarks. “I knew at once that I wanted to provide an accessible place for people to eat.”

While Arriaza’s original plan was to open a restaurant in Elmore, her interactions with the community helped her realize that a convenience store would be a better choice.

“I have a history working in food service, and I love to cook for people, which is why a restaurant was my original idea,” Arriaza shares. “But I learned very quickly that a convenience store would serve the community’s needs better.”

Now, Arriaza is the proud owner of C&E Mini Market, where she offers a variety of kitchen essentials and ready-to-eat foods to the Elmore community, and despite the short time since its grand opening event on June 14, a solid customer base has provided consistent support to the business.

“I have around 50 customers every day, and there’s already a group of around 20 regulars that come in every day,” Arriaza explains. “The first week we were open was crazy – there were people lined up waiting outside to buy stuff.”

Arriaza is a first-time business owner, but she doesn’t run her store alone – she has the support of her sister, Candy Zelada, and her daughter also lends a hand from time to time.

“I was terrified to start a business of my own, but my daughter gave me lots of encouragement,” Arriaza admits. “I knew that I needed a job that connects with the community, and this was the perfect opportunity – I can’t sit in an office all day; I need to talk to people and find out what’s going on in the community.”

Arriaza also learned that opening her own business involved a lot more admin work that she expected, but she is deeply grateful for how helpful the Elmore City Council was in helping her get her business up and running.

“Getting the licensing all sorted out was a challenge, and it took a lot of work with the City Council to get everything up and running,” Arriaza shares. “They were very helpful and supportive throughout the entire process, and everything is on track now. I even see some of the council members come in to my store sometimes.”

Aside from the typical convenience store items, Arriaza also stocks her shelves with freshly-made Hispanic food from her own kitchen, as well as a wide variety of frozen meals and refrigerated foods that people can take to go. Uniquely, many of the products on the shelves are ones you would expect to see in the Hispanic foods aisle of a grocery store – masa flour, multiple varieties of salsa, Tajín, and spicy-sweet candies from Mexico.

“Most of my customers are either elderly people or kids, so there’s always a demand for hot food that people can take to-go, as well as frozen meals, and I always try to keep items like that stocked,” Arriaza explains. “I make my own foods to sell, like tamales and burritos, but I had customers telling me how they liked to cook those kinds of foods at home, too, which was a welcome surprise. I don’t want to fill my store with things that people don’t need, so I try to cater to the community’s needs.”

The most important thing to the success of any business is community support, and Arriaza is happy to say that she’s received it in spades.

“You can really feel the love from the community, and that makes me really happy,” Arriaza shares. “I was a little worried how I would be received by the community when my store opened, since I’m not from around here. But Elmore welcomed me with open arms, and they accept me, even though they don’t know me that well.”