A family of thirteen children and a cheaper nut.

De la Rosa is a family confectioner from the Mexican state of Jalisco, and its name comes from a sweet rather than a person. The company says that in 1942 Jesús Michel González and his family began making sweets by hand at home, and that Michel had learned to work out formulas while employed at a pharmaceutical company. Forbes México, in a 2019 profile, places the start in the 1940s and describes the founders as the couple Jesús Michel González and Elvira Velasco Rolón, who had closed a shop in San Marcos, Jalisco, and needed to support their thirteen children. They started again in Guadalajara, Forbes México says, first making perfumed pastilles, then marshmallow lollipops and guitar-shaped sweets. English and Spanish Wikipedia, citing a 2016 article, date the Guadalajara business to between 1948 and 1950 and say it traded as Conitas, selling sprinkle biscuits, lollipops and caramels.

The product that made the name came next. In 1950, according to Wikipedia and Milenio, the family created a mazapán modelled on the Spanish almond marzipan but made with peanuts, which were cheaper than almonds, and without the egg of the original recipe. Forbes México says Jesús Michel made the swap from almond to peanut himself. Wikipedia lists its ingredients as sugar, peanuts and artificial flavouring, and the company calls Conitas the first peanut mazapán.

The rose arrived by accident. The first mazapanes were sold without a brand and then under the Conitas name, with an emblem of three strawberries, Forbes México and Wikipedia say. A rival mazapán maker whose logo showed three cherries threatened to sue, saying customers would confuse the two, so Michel replaced the strawberries with a rose; at the time a campaign was promoting Guadalajara as “la ciudad de las rosas,” the city of roses. Shoppers began asking for “el de la rosa,” the one with the rose, and the name stuck. The company tells the same story in a line it attributes to its founder: that mazapán is a sweet for the people, and the people gave it its name.

A family recipe and a sweet with its own day.

Mazapán de la Rosa remains the company’s best-known product. English Wikipedia, citing Forbes México, calls it one of Mexico’s most popular snacks, sold in corner shops, markets and supermarkets in Mexico and the United States. In 2016 Enrique Michel Velasco told Milenio Jalisco that the company already made a chocolate-covered mazapán of 28 grams and was preparing a new line for a larger one of 45 or 50 grams, along with more mazapán machines to meet demand. In the same interview he said the recipe is a family secret passed down through the generations, and that the company made around 300 tonnes of mazapán a day.

The sweet has also travelled into other foods. In 2020 Danone launched a Danette dessert in a Mazapán De La Rosa flavour, the Mexican daily 24 Horas reported, and Wikipedia records mazapán being used in ice cream, agua fresca and conchas, the Mexican sweet bread. The sweet has its own day too: Milenio noted in 2021 that a Día Mundial del Mazapán, a world mazapán day, is celebrated on 12 January, and reported that De la Rosa had set a Guinness World Record for the largest mazapán in 2018, followed by a large public event in 2020.

The mazapán is only part of the range. The company lists marshmallows, chocolates, gummies, peanut snacks, chewing gum, hard and soft caramels, lollipops and Pulparindo, its tamarind sweets, among its Mexican products. Forbes México put the number of products at more than 500 in 2019, sold through the company’s own distribution business.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Indian snack and Mexican food names: Balaji, Kurkure, Sunfeast, Unibic, Tajín, Marinela and De la Rosa. Indian snack and Mexican food brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger food groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A food brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the snack or meal it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Tlajomulco, the Michel Velasco siblings and exports.

De la Rosa is still owned by the family that started it. In 1969, at the request of the local priest, the family moved production to Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, south of Guadalajara, Forbes México reported. Jesús Michel González died in 1984 at 73, the magazine said, and his son Enrique Michel Velasco, then 33, took charge of production at Tlajomulco. In 2019 eleven of the thirteen Michel Velasco siblings were still in the business and together owned all of its factories in different proportions, with grandchildren working in production, sales, packaging, marketing and distribution; Enrique and Jesús Michel Velasco were named as directors and partners. Milenio Jalisco described Enrique Michel as chairman and director general in 2016.

Its sweets are made in Jalisco. Forbes México described the Tlajomulco site as the main plant, with more than 100,000 square metres, over 30 smaller production units under the De la Rosa name and capacity for 10 million mazapanes a day; a plant in San Sebastián, Jalisco, made hard sweets and lollipops, and one in Guadalajara made soft sweets, caramel lollipops and Pulparindo. The company itself now lists three production plants, one distribution centre and more than 2,500 employees, and says it brings in confectionery machinery from countries such as Germany. In 2019 Forbes México also reported plans for a plant in Costa Rica.

Exports are a smaller but steady share. Enrique Michel told Milenio Jalisco in 2016 that 18 to 19 per cent of production was exported, with the United States the main foreign market, and that the company sold in more than 15 countries; Forbes México put the export share at about 20 per cent in 2019, to the United States, Canada, Central America and the European Union. The company adds the Middle East to that list. Market researchers cited by Forbes México ranked De la Rosa sixth in Mexican sweets and confectionery by Euromonitor’s measure, and first by volume in wholesale non-chocolate confectionery by Iscam’s, which gave it a 92.1 per cent share of wholesale mazapán sales.

For a design guide, De la Rosa shows how a single flower, chosen to avoid a dispute, can become the name customers ask for. Compare Ibarra, Guadalajara’s table chocolate, and Arcor, the Argentine sweet maker. For this guide we use a rose red, a mazapán tan and a leaf green with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep De la Rosa’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.