Mariko Grady’s interest in miso started as an accomplished singer and dancer trying to stay healthy while on tour. After learning more about Japanese fermented foods, nourishing her family with her own Miso, and selling the products to raise funds for the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami, Mariko realized she had a community of interested and loyal customers. In 2012, Mariko joined La Cocina to formalize her packaged food business, Aedan Fermented Foods. In 2021, she accomplished her long-term business goal of opening a cafe and retail space.

 Mariko now has a storefront  in the Mission where she sells Japanese fermented products, including Miso, Amazake, Shio Koji, and 358pickling sauce. All are based on her small batch handcrafted organic Koji. Mariko is passionate about sharing how to make healthy, tasty, probiotic foods with simple ingredients. She also offers prepared foods, including onigiri and her Koji Bento Boxes, with daily specials. Fine dining restaurant chefs in the Bay Area love Aedan products and use them as complimentary ingredients to their menus. Since opening her space, she has hosted popular monthly Miso-making and Koji-making classes that often sell out.

Victoria Lozano is a Venezuelan pastry chef who moved to the United States in early 2017-working for restaurants like Absinthe and China Live in San Francisco and Épicerie Boulud and Marc Forgione in New York City, where she lived for a year in 2019.

The love and passion for food runs in her family; her parents owned a restaurant in her hometown, Rubio for 27 years. One of her early memories in the kitchen with her dad, the Head Chef, is cleaning calamari and playing with cornstarch slurry. During her teenage years, she felt more interested in learning about front-of-the-house duties; she worked different positions such as bar back, server, hostess, accounting, and finances with her mom, the general manager. After graduating from high school, she went on exchange to the Philippines, where she experienced different and much more complex flavors. During her year in such a country, she aimed to try as many new dishes and ingredients as possible. Coming back from the Philippines, she stayed in San Francisco with her sister to take ESL classes and helped in the kitchen of The Parsonage B&B, a charming bed and breakfast owned by her parents’ friends. While in San Francisco, she ran into La Cocina’s street food fair and fell in love with their organization. Another spot in San Francisco that made her love food and cooking even more was Omnivore Books on Food, a lovely bookshop in Noe Valley.

Back in Venezuela, she attended Culinary Arts School in Caracas. She interned and got her first full-time job at La Casa Bistro, a high-end restaurant serving authentic Venezuelan cuisine in the capital. From 2022 through 2025, Victoria ran Andina – her business born out of La Cocina’s kitchen incubator program out of a pop-up space in the San Francisco Jazz Center.

Reyna Maldonado, born in Guerrero, Mexico, was raised in the heart of La Costa Grande, where she was deeply influenced by the indigenous traditions passed down by her grandparents, Mami Goya and Papi Chico. Their teachings, rooted in healing practices, storytelling, and the art of crafting with plants, flowers, and clay, instilled in Reyna a deep respect for cultural heritage and the wisdom of her ancestors. Growing up surrounded by an abundance of fruits and plants, Reyna learned not only the practical skills of cultivation but also the spiritual significance of the land and the strong sense of community that ties everything together. In 1999, Reyna migrated to San Francisco’s Mission District, reuniting with her mother, Ofelia Barajas. This separation from her grandparents deepened her desire for a reconnection to the land. Driven by this need, Reyna began an apprenticeship at a nonprofit educational farm, which sparked her passion for cultivating a healthy, just food system. Navigating the complexities of an undocumented life in the city, she developed a fierce entrepreneurial spirit that led her to transition from an Immigrant Rights Community Organizer to completing her education at Mills College.

With a jefa mentality and a commitment to collective healing, Reyna’s journey merged activism and entrepreneurship. Reconnecting with her roots through farming and indigenous healing practices, she co-founded Las Guerrera’s Kitchen with her mother in Oakland. The restaurant, offering traditional Guerrero dishes, became not just a business but a platform for empowering immigrant women-especially those like her mother-who are often overlooked in the entrepreneurial world. Las Guerrera’s Kitchen is a symbol of resilience and community strength, where every dish tells a story of culture, survival, and entrepreneurship. Reyna’s work transcends the kitchen-her commitment to food justice and her entrepreneurial drive make her a powerful force in reshaping the food industry and advocating for immigrant rights. Through Las Guerrera’s Kitchen, Reyna shows how building a business is an act of healing and empowerment, creating a space where every meal is not just a taste of home but a celebration of strength, resilience, and the unbreakable spirit of immigrant entrepreneurs.

Fernay McPherson, Chef and Owner of Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement, was born and raised in San Francisco’s Fillmore District also known as the “Harlem of the West”. City policy separated her Black neighborhood from downtown and the Civic Center, and the concurrent crack epidemic of the 80s wrought violence and displacement. Throughout it all, Fernay was cooking for her community. She started cooking at the age of nine alongside her great aunt Minnie and her grandmother Lillie Bell hence her restaurant name “Minnie Bell’s”.

After graduating from culinary school, Fernay became a city bus driver and started her food business, Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement, as a catering business and food truck. In 2017, Fernay was chosen as one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Rising Star Chefs. From there, she looked endlessly for a permanent brick-and-mortar space in the Fillmore neighborhood, but commercial real estate was too expensive, so she popped up across the Bay Bridge at a kiosk at Public Market Emeryville in March 2018. Almost immediately, her modern fried chicken shack concept was overwhelmed with success and media accolades, and her presence became permanent. Since then the San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications have said that she has “the best mac and cheese” and “the best fried chicken” in the Bay Area. In 2019, Fernay was named a Smith Fellow by the Southern Foodways Alliance.

Fernay also serves as a board member of La Cocina, a non-profit food business incubator program that supports home cooks like herself and supports grassroots community organizations like Ur Blessings.

Born in Mexico City and raised in San Francisco, Luz Dayana grew up in a family of chefs. Her father, Miguel, worked in the kitchens of Italian restaurants in North Beach for more than 15 years. Her mother, Veronica, started their family business, El Huarache Loco, in 2005 at La Cocina’s incubator kitchen in San Francisco’s Mission District. What began as a search for the tastes of home quickly transformed into suc­cess when Chef Veronica Salazar launched El Huarache Loco, specializing in dishes from Mexico City. Veronica and her family first started selling out of their small apartment in what is now known as the TenderNob in San Francisco. With the help of La Cocina they began doing catering events, landed a spot at the Alemany Farmers Market-the first farmers market in California and just three years later joined the food line-up for the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival. El Huarache Loco has always been a family affair with Veronica and Miguel’s three children- Luz Dayana being the oldest. In March 2012, Veronica and her family opened up their first brick and mortar in Marin County at Marin Country Mart. Veronica and Miguel are proud to see that Luz will continue the family legacy of chefs and love to see her growth! In 2019, Luz spent a year with La Cocina traveling around the country to promote the “We Are La Cocina” cookbook. The experience introduced her to the food industry and cultures on a larger scale, inspiring her to enroll in culinary school. As she continues through the Culinary Arts and Hospitality program at CCSF, Luz hopes to one day combine her love of cooking with travel, learning about new cultures and cuisines around the globe alongside her family.

Alicia Villanueva is a talented cook who began selling her delicious tamales door to door to support her family while she worked cleaning houses and raising three kids. In August of 2010, Alicia Villanueva came to La Cocina with a dream to start her own tamale cart to spread her Mexican traditions and support her family. Her natural resilience, creativity, and leadership became more apparent as her business grew. She finally let the rest of the world in on her amazing food and after 6 years in the La Cocina program, she opened a 6,000 sq. foot factory that employs over 20 people in her community. She has gone from producing 500 tamales weekly to over 45,000 tamales monthly. Her tamales are sold in groceries across the Bay Area, and she has even signed a deal with Alaska Airlines. In 2019, she was able to send her youngest child to college and purchase her first home since arriving in the U.S. over 20 years ago.  In 2023, Alicia was featured in Grit and Grace, the first-ever documentary by a bipartisan House committee working to highlight issues of economic inequality in America.