If you could determine your own destiny, would you?

Plenty of folks feel that’s a gargantuan ask – and many don’t have the courage to step up to an opportunity like that.

At BiziBAZA, we’re fortunate to know many beautiful, important reasons, and incredible stories of how and why our awesome Sellers choose to.

The artisans, makers, growers, and producers we choose to partner with – and who choose to partner with us – get it. They’re real people, with real life journeys – many of them incredibly challenging – who decided and continue to prove that producing and providing their own products and services on their own terms, can be one of the most satisfying experiences a human can have in world full of options.

Meet Maria. She’s a 2nd generation Latinx 30-something, co-owner and (as she humbly describes it) host of Casa Sanchez based out of Gilroy, CA.

Maria grew up in a large family whose main means of income was performing agriculture-based work in the Salinas Valley Basin. Along with her siblings, she went to school during the week, and on the weekends joined her parents sorting, cleaning, and packaging bulk produce for major wholesale distributors.

A savvy learner and high school graduate, Maria knew her life was destined for more; while growing up and working with her family gave her some satisfaction being a part of a system that was providing for her family and community, she longed for more connection to the real people she was helping to feed.

At the age of 22, Maria decided to take her desires and dreams one faithful step further, and opened up her own fruit and veggie roadside stand. The relationships she’d built with farmers and producers in her packaging work afforded her access to the best and brightest seasonal produce, and she found that passers by genuinely loved supporting this young woman full of initiative, courage and self-determinative spirit.

After a few years of hustle, grit, and growth, Maria was able to take another big leap – in one of the South Bay’s most well respected farmers markets. Again, it was her relationships with the agricultural community – and now with her regular customers – that enabled her to level up her offering, which in turn provided her and her business more opportunity to expand.

Maria and her mighty Casa Sanchez team are now a thriving business with their own, hand- picked points of distribution – and BiziBAZA® is honored to be one of them.

The mutual respect and honoring of each other’s businesses is what brought us together initially - and it’s our shared values of ethically, consciously sourcing and selling goods from known sources that keeps us thriving together.