PCC Community Markets launches Edmonds-based Alberto’s Churros retail line in 16 stores

PCC Community Markets has introduced Alberto’s Churros retail line in all 16 of its stores this month, expanding support for the longtime Edmonds family business through a new partnership.

The launch includes a collaboration with Specialty Frozen Food Distributors that will bring the premium churros to independent retailers across Western Washington. The new 12-pack retail product features sunflower oil, unbleached flour and cane sugar, maintaining the company’s signature plant-based recipe while meeting PCC’s ingredient guidelines.

Ramirez-Araujo told My Neighborhood News Group that said he went to a URM Foodservice vender summit and expected to sell the churros in the usual 50-count boxes for the bakery in grocery stores. However, all of the grocery representatives told him that they would rather sell his product as retail in the freezer section.

“This took me by surprise,” he said. “We had been on the food service side of the business for 30 years, and we weren’t familiar with retail churros. This is something that they don’t even do in Latin America, where churros are much more popular. But since they wanted the product, we decided to go for it.”

Before the retail distribution, Alberto’s Churros mainly sold and delivered their churros to restaurants, such as Taco Time and the Copacabana restaurant at Pike Place Market.

Ramirez-Araujo said his company designed the box, and URM helped distribute the churros to several chains in Eastern Washington, including Yoke’s Fresh Market, Super 1 Foods, Rosauers and Harvest Foods.

While Ramirez-Araujo said the preferred method for cooking churros is the deep fryer, consumers can use an air fryer or oven.

“In an air fryer, it can take anywhere from three to seven minutes depending on the type of air fryer,” he said. “An oven will take less than 15 minutes. Another option is to pan fry the churros.”

He said he is working to produce instructional and cooking videos on how to pan fry churros on Alberto’s Churros social media accounts.

Alberto’s Churros started in 1987, when Ramirez-Araujo’s parents Alberto and Elsa opened the first bakery in Seattle’s University District, selling handmade churros and other pastries to local restaurants and passer-bys.

Because of the high demand for churros in the mid-1990s, the business outgrew its site and was relocated to its present Edmonds location, behind the downtown Edmonds Ace Hardware building.

In 1997, then-Washington Gov. Gary Locke presented Alberto and Elsa with the Minority Enterprise Award, the highest level of national recognition that a U.S. minority-owned business can receive from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

After Alberto died in 2003, Elsa ran the business by herself with one employee. In 2018, Ramirez-Araujo started to help his mom and eventually took over the business.