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Isela Hernández ’95 founded HERNÁN, which sells cookware, tableware, and specialty foods from her family’s ancestral land

By Melissa Newcomb

ILR alum Isela Hernández ’95 grew up in the border town of Del Rio, TX, frequently visiting family in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, just six miles south. As an adult living in NYC, she was struck by how popular Mexican food was in the city—but also by how little it resembled the nation’s actual cuisine.

“After a visit home, I became reinspired by my cultural roots,” Hernández recalls. “It made me think, ‘If someone wanted to make Mexican food in an authentic manner, how would they do it?’”

Isela Hernández looks at cocoa beans with a food producer. — Sourcing cocoa beans.

Hernández had grown up with staples like a cast-iron comal for making tortillas and a molinillo used to froth hot chocolate—but she knew that the further one lived from the Southwest, the harder it was to acquire authentic Mexican products and cookware.

Tapping her experience in sourcing products for a large NYC department store, in 2007 she launched HERNÁN, a purveyor of premium Mexican culinary items, from specialty foods to kitchenware.

All its products—sold online, in gourmet stores, and in some restaurants and cafés—are sourced from Mexico.

Isela Hernández with bowls of mole almendrado, mole verde, pipian, and other spices. — Inspecting mole ingredients at a market.

Hernández makes frequent trips around the country to source goods from artisans and partner with food producers to create proprietary recipes for specialty items sold under the HERNÁN label.

Many of her suppliers are expanding beyond their local community for the first time.

Says Hernández: “My mission has always been to do both: promote my Mexican culture and culinary traditions, and open up market space for producers who don’t normally have access to customers outside their country or even their town.”

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Hernández makes frequent trips around Mexico to partner with artisans and food producers.

HERNÁN, which is based in Hernández’s Texas hometown, started with kitchenware, including cookware, prep tools, and clay serving pieces.

Its traditional molinillos, which comprise loose rings stacked around a handle, are hand-carved from a single piece of wood that’s burned to create different hues.

Its molcajetes—mortar-and-pestle sets for making guacamole, salsas, and other dishes—are also hand-carved, from volcanic stone.

Hernan's Mexican lime squeezer with a margarita and limes. — An *exprimidor* (lime squeezer).

HERNÁN has since expanded to include foods like hot chocolate and different types of mole, the intensely flavored sauce made with chiles, spices, nuts, and other ingredients.

Its hot chocolate—a combination of cacao beans, cinnamon, and sugar that comes in solid form and is whisked with milk—is sourced from a family that has been making the rich drink for three generations.

In 2012, it won the “outstanding hot beverage” award from the Specialty Food Association.

HERNÁN’s mole poblano was named best in its category two years later.

Hernández and her company have been featured in such major media as Food & Wine, Martha Stewart Living, Food Network, and Telemundo, as well as in an episode of AT&T’s entrepreneurship web series “Escape the Cube.”

In the New York Times, Hernández was among the recipients of “love letters to small business,” a story that ran in the opinion section in 2021.