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Miguel Hernandez has spent most of his life inside his family’s Richfield restaurant — El Tejaban Mexican Grill on Nicollet Avenue.
“I remember it because I was in high school in 2008. I remember going in to help out, wash dishes after school and it was my dad cooking and my mom serving,” Hernandez said.
The walls are lined with artwork of landscapes from Mexico, and the air carries the smell of authentic Mexican cuisine. For nearly 20 years, this is where Hernandez and his parents, who immigrated from Mexico, have been serving food and a slice of home.
“The success came from just authentically representing what they wanted to see on a menu and what they brought to the country from their culture, from just being themselves, and that spoke to a lot of people.”
Just a five-minute drive away, Ethiopian entrepreneur Arif Ahmed is expanding his reach – with the third location of Nashville Coop on Penn Avenue, a family-owned restaurant which offers a unique blend of Nashville-style chicken with an Ethiopian twist.
“My mom helped develop the recipes. Berbere is something that's been in our family for a very long time. So for those who don't know, it's a very popular Ethiopian spice blend, and what we did is incorporated that with Nashville-style chicken.”
Ahmed co-founded the restaurant with his parents and siblings. He was born in Ethiopia and moved to Minnesota when he was five. His family first ran a food truck before expanding into restaurants across the Twin Cities.
“Way back in 2020, right before COVID, we wanted to test out a new concept in the cities. And, you know, when COVID came around and started shutting down a lot of businesses, we didn't really have a choice, we kind of had to move forward,” Ahmed said.
That risk paid off. Ahmed says the family’s story is about more than business — it’s reshaping how Minnesotans experience Ethiopian flavors.
“One thing every American grocery store has in common, you know, there's your Asian aisle, there's a Mexican aisle, and then now the more recent, Indian aisle, but really there's no African aisle. You know, that's kind of our goal is, really, to put that in mainstream food and retail.”
Less than a block away from Nashville Coop — sits World Foods Halal Market — an Afghan grocery store. Brothers Mirwais Mohmand and Masehullah Sahil came to Minnesota after years of working with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. In Richfield, Sahil said Afghan families struggled to find the foods they grew up with.
“So we thought, well, that’s a definite need, and will be like a peace of mind for our community and something we can provide in a difficult time, that can feel like home. So something from home, they can feel and enjoy.”
Aisles of Afghan breads, colorful candies, and spices fill the store, alongside everyday foods from around the world. The store opened in February 2024, after community fundraising and months of renovations. Sahil says while it started with Afghan products, it’s grown into something much larger.
“The goal was not only to serve the Afghan community, our goal was to serve everybody around here,” he said.
The brothers say business hasn’t been easy — the first year was especially challenging — but support from the Richfield community has kept them going. And like other immigrant entrepreneurs in the area, they see their store as more than a business.
‘Proud of our fabric of immigrant business owners’
In Richfield, immigrant businesses aren’t just surviving — they’re shaping the city’s economy and community.
Roughly 17 percent of the city’s population were born outside the United States.
A Minnesota Chamber Foundation report shows Minnesota’s total labor force and employment gains this decade have been largely driven by immigration.
Findings show the state added more than 100,000 foreign-born workers to the labor force from 2010-2023.
Businesses near the intersections of 66th Street and Penn Avenue and 66th Street and Nicollet Avenue represent the growing diversity of the suburb just south of Minneapolis. This includes the new Loma Bonita Market opening just across the street from El Tejaban.
Simon Joel Trautmann Cordova served on the Richfield City Council for nearly eight years and now leads a law group that works closely with immigrant business owners. He says Richfield has become a hub for first- and second-generation entrepreneurs.
“America produces trillions of dollars through immigrants and from immigrant labor and immigrant owned businesses and so Richfield, I think, is a great and beautiful expression of that,” Trautmann Cordova said. “We're proud of our fabric of immigrant business owners and community members. So they're on Penn Avenue here, we're on Mainstreet. They're everywhere. But I think it's an expression of a reality all across America.”
Taking traditional dishes in a new direction
For Hernandez, that expression is personal. Born in Los Angeles, he spent nearly two decades working in his parents’ restaurant before launching his own venture — Lito’s Burritos, a pop-up currently operating out of El Tejaban, and now set to open on Lake Street in Minneapolis.
“I wanted to bring Los Angeles to Richfield to Minnesota, and that's breakfast burritos. That's taking traditional sauces and steaks from what they've been doing for 17 years, and wrapping them in burritos and adding fries and adding different things that just don't exactly make sense to a lot of folks from Mexico, but they make sense to me,” Hernandez said.
His parents, Miguel Hernandez Sr. and Rosa Zambrano, take pride in what they built at El Tejaban — and even more in seeing their children carry that legacy forward.
Hernandez's mom says it's the part that makes her the proudest.
“My son, my daughter, follow their father, what he’s doing. I'm happy. I think I'm very happy,” Zambrano said.
His father, Hernandez Sr., says with Lito’s Burritos, he believes his son has taken the family’s passion in a new direction. Not only embracing it – but making it his own.
“He's better than me, I think. He does something different, because it's Mexican food too, but it's in the north of Mexico and you don't see burritos in Mexico City,” Hernandez Sr. said.
Hernandez said he and his parents are proud to be a part of Richfield’s growth and changes, and to show that they are not the only immigrant-owned businesses in the city.
“It's clearly been a good place to be an immigrant and start a business, because there's so many other owners in the city, and that's just proven by going down 66 and seeing so many great places to eat,” he said. “So I think they've been facilitating that since they got here. I wouldn't be here to be able to create great burritos if it weren't for my parents, moving across borders, sacrificing so much.”
The journey hasn’t been without challenges. Rising rents, complex licensing requirements, and limited access to capital continue to test many entrepreneurs. Even so, these business owners are finding ways to grow, support their communities, and keep their cultures alive.
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