From Cookbook to Movement: The Story of Cocina Libre

Transcript:

Joshua Ross:

My name is Joshua Ross and welcome to the entrepreneurship at DU Podcast.

Julia Roncoroni:

We worked with 29 chefs from 10 different countries for our book one. All of the stories were moving in their own ways.

Joshua Ross:

In this episode, I sit down with Julia Roncoroni. She’s an entrepreneur, professor at the University of Denver and co-founder of Illa Libre Collective. This is an organization that focuses on building community and culture through food and storytelling,

Julia Roncoroni:

Because I think when you have Lela making bu with you and eating BU with you, and then she shares, well, I came here because my two daughters needed an education and we crossed the giant triangle by foot at risk of being raped, at risk of being murdered because it mattered enough to me that they were able to go through high school.

Joshua Ross:

Julie and her partner, Delio Figueroa, created Cocina with a powerful mission to amplify the voices of immigrants and share their personal stories through their universal language of food. What began as a cookbook, selling over 700 copies, has since grown into a beautiful business now encompassing a forthcoming documentary, workshops, catering services, and community hosted events.

Julia Roncoroni:

We’ve had immigrants come to us and say, I didn’t think my story mattered. I didn’t think anyone would care. Those are the moments where I’m like, alright, we’re doing the right thing here.

Joshua Ross:

Here’s my interview with Julia. Julia, welcome to the podcast.

Julia Roncoroni:

Thank you for having us. Thank you so much.

Joshua Ross:

So I want to start off by reading the following quote off the Cocina Libre Collective website. It’s something that spoke to me and I think it’ll kind of level set our discussion today. So at Cocina Libre, we believe food is more than sustenance. It is a bridge between cultures and the tool for empowerment. We build community and amplify immigrant voices through the universal language of food. So Cocina Libre is such a unique intersection of food, storytelling, activism, I also believe impact. So what inspired you to bring this idea to life?

Julia Roncoroni:

Yeah, I am an immigrant. I’m from Argentina and I’m also a licensed psychologist who’s worked with immigrants my entire career. And my partner, Dr. Lio Fiera, is a music anthropologist, also very intrigued by storytelling and history and culture. He’s also worked with immigrants his entire career. And so for us, I think together we understand a lot of the challenges and also the triumphs and the resilience that come with being an immigrant to the us. And because we are primarily surrounded by immigrants in our personal lives, we also have noticed how much food serves as a bridge for us to connect. So when someone’s celebrating, when someone’s stressed and studying, for example, we always show up and show up with food, and a lot of the stories that we’ve heard in our community have been shared, our food. And so the aha moment for us led to that creation of cuisine, the realization that if the could experience this, we change the way that we talk about immigration and that’s how casino gets started.

Joshua Ross:

So I also believe that who we are becomes a part of what we do and that what drives us, the businesses we create, the relationships, the people that we interact with. When you talk about your personal and your career experiences, you say you’re an immigrant from Argentina. How does that shape the mission and values of what you both are doing with Cocina?

Julia Roncoroni:

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think that my journey as an immigrant and a psychologist has definitely shaped what Cocina is and what we do. I’ve again, worked extensively with immigrant communities and I’ve also seen how immigrants are misrepresented because if you turn your TV on, you turn the radio on. So often immigrants are talked about as either criminals or victims, but there’s no full understanding of the complexity that comes with immigrants. Our immigrants are lawyers, they’re moms, they’re dads, they’re daughters. And so for us it was how do we chefs? And so for us it was how do we capture that nuance in the work that we’re doing? I think definitely my career in academia and also I’ve done multicultural trainings pretty much my entire career. And so of course those have also shaped how we think about the programming that we offer through cuisine.

Joshua Ross:

I want to pull on that thread a little bit about this whole public perception of immigrants right now. It’s a very divisive time in our country, very sad time in our country. And how are you able to maybe shape or alter that narrative a little bit about how immigrants are being perceived and maybe also what the value that they provide to our society, to our communities, and really to our country.

Julia Roncoroni:

I think there’s a space or a segment of our population that is well-meaning, but also not fully, doesn’t have as much experience with immigrants. And so although they mean well, they don’t have exposure to the right experiences and the right information to do good by their communities. And so we’ve had a lot of those people who come to our dinners, who come to our events and say our workshops and say, I didn’t know that the Dion Jungle existed. Thank you for explaining this to me nicely. I didn’t know that this was something the immigrants at the train LA to get here. Thank you so much for. And so I think that offering food serve as a language, again, I’ve taught years and years of multicultural classes in the classroom, and it’s boring, right? Because you’re sitting in front of a PowerPoint, which I’m only lecturing at you, it’s not exciting, it’s not engaging. And often what happens is students leave feeling like they’re not good enough, feeling guilty about their white privilege, feeling guilty about their SES and not excited about learning more. And I think what Sina brings that is unique is that that food, right now we’re sitting together, now we’ve leveled the praying field. Now you can ask questions. And I think that the food that in and of itself serves as a bridge.

Joshua Ross:

I was speaking with my sister a couple days ago and she and her husband are going to London in a couple months, and I said to her, I was like, Rachel, the food there is just absolutely incredible. You just need to lean into it. She’s like, what are you talking about? She’s like, that’s what I’m least excited about. Nothing against English food. But I said, no, no, I said, you’ll do yourself justice if you do not eat English food the entire time you’re there because they have such a diverse immigrant population that brings in foods and flavors from all over the world.

Julia Roncoroni:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s the food and also through the food, understanding the complexity of the people that stand behind that food. So often when we talk about immigration, we talk about should we fix the immigration system? Is it broken? Is it not? Should immigrants be allowed to yes or no? And forget that again, the immigrants that we’re talking about are sisters and moms and dads and sons. And I think that the food allows us to have these conversations in a way that is politics matter to me. They do. At least I think every conversation we have is political. And I also think we can have a conversation about immigration humanizing the immigrant experience.

Joshua Ross:

And oh, by the way, most of us are immigrants, first, second, third, fourth generation. I think that gets lost. And the beauty of this country, it was built on the backs of immigrants. And so sometimes I think we have very short memories in terms of how we all got here and the privilege we have to be here.

Julia Roncoroni:

So often when we do our workshops in the community, we start the conversation with how many of you were born or come from families that were born outside of Denver, Colorado? Always more than I’d say three quarters of our crowd raise our hands. And so that’s also a starting point, like you said, of, okay, so then we got to reconceptualize what Omega means too.

Joshua Ross:

That is a great point. We have to reconceptualize that. And you know what, maybe have a little empathy as well.

Julia Roncoroni:

And that’s the goal of casino, right? Absolutely. It’s building empathy in our audiences, again, through humanizing them. Because I think when you have Lela making adepas with you and eating adepas with you, and then she shares, well, I came here because my two daughters need an education, and we crossed the giant triangle by foot at risk of being raped, at risk of being murdered because it mattered enough to me that they were able to go through high school. Then you hear the conversation about immigration in a whole other way.

Joshua Ross:

So Sina is so much more than a business. Your goal, and I’m pulling this from, I believe this was your website or somebody of your marketing material, is to amplify immigrant voices, foster culture connection, and promote social justice. So that is a lot for you all to do and a very huge and lofty goal. So with that being said, how do you define success for Cocina that goes beyond those traditional things like profit and reach and engagement? How will you and your partner say, you know what, we’re having success here.

Julia Roncoroni:

Yeah, I think for us it’s about social impact. So raising awareness, like you said, it’s amplifying immigrant voices. We’ve had immigrants come to us and say, I didn’t think my story mattered. I didn’t think anyone would care. Those are the moments where I’m like, alright, we’re doing the right thing here. This is working financial empowerment, because we’ve had chefs who have been employed full time in the food industry, chefs who have participated in events that have provided revenue to them, community economic growth, right? Because as you’re contributing financially to your community as opposed to eating out in a large, say, chain restaurant, then you’re keeping that money in the community. And last is promoting social justice for us. It’s not just humanizing or just eating, but it is also having very difficult conversations and then acting according to that. Of course, again, the selling the books matters, how much money we bring in matters for sustainability. But I think again, the real measure of success is the change that we create in public perception and the opportunities that we offer the immigrants who work with us.

Joshua Ross:

So do you have an interesting or impactful immigrant story that you’d be willing to share? Someone that whose life’s been transformed, maybe their family’s lives have been transformed through what you’re all doing?

Julia Roncoroni:

We have 50,000, unfortunately. That’s so great.

Joshua Ross:

Our audience needs to buy the cookbook.

Julia Roncoroni:

And again, there’s one verage of that book, but I think what distinguishes casino is the fostering of economic growth in the employment opportunities for chefs. I just brought up, Lila is from Venezuela. She came to the US in 2023 towards the end of 2023. And she came because she had two adolescent daughters and there were no teachers in high school who were teaching her daughters. And so the high school teachers that they had were immediate graduates. So if you finished the grade 12, then you were qualified to be a teacher. And Nila felt very uncomfortable with the lack of opportunities for her daughters. So she crossed the Darion jungle, she crossed Mexico by train, she shows up in Denver and she’s struggling to find secure housing. And then we met through a common friend and she was able to participate in the first book. We always compensate our chefs for their participation in our programming, but she was able to participate in the first book, she was able to participate in the documentary. And then after that, through connections that we had at, she was able to find full-time employment in the food industry.

Joshua Ross:

That is amazing. And there’s a few articles and they’re a little older and I think maybe a year old from the New York Times and one of their writers embedded with a group crossing the Darion gap. And it is an incredible, it almost makes me want to start crying story about what these people go through to get to Mexico and hopefully the United States. And you have to realize how bad it must be in their home countries for them to really risk death. And a lot of times they’re carrying babies and toddlers and imagine how difficult they are on a normal day.

Julia Roncoroni:

Yeah, we had one of the participants at our documentary who came with, I think at that point the baby was a year and a half and he almost drowned crossing the river almost at the us. And so yeah, these stories are heavy. And so for us, that’s what we’re hoping to do with casino, turning these stories into opportunities for the immigrants.

Joshua Ross:

Alright, so as you said earlier, you were originally from Argentina, I believe Buenos Aires, your formal education was on early childhood education and then psychology, and then you decide to create a mission-driven business. So as I was reading through your literature and learning more about you, the one thing I didn’t see was a business degree in there. And so you’ve talked a little bit about how this started, but I would like to also understand how you and your partner approached the business side. What were the challenges? How did you learn about things that you had no idea about and things that you didn’t even know that you didn’t know?

Julia Roncoroni:

Yeah, I’ll edit one thing you said and that’s that we decided to create a business because I think the business decided to create us and we just rolled with it. We started casina as most academics do with the thought of the book as the final product. And then the accolades come and I’m done. And I didn’t even think of the accolades for me when we did the book lunch, people were shocked that we had a party with music, with food, with children running around. That was more, I think more de on me than an actual book lunch. Then casino took off. People started coming to us and saying, I am turning 40. Will you celebrate my birthday party? I’m getting married next year. I’m like, what are you asking me? I’m a quantitative researcher at that. No. And so it took a minute to think of, wait, how do we use this that keeps coming to us and turn it into a meaningful opportunity for the chefs because the chefs could use the opportunity of catering.

And so although it wasn’t something that we did, we started thinking of, but we also wanted to keep the stories in there and not just be someone who delivers food and then have, because we’ve been, I’ll say as an academic, I’ve been exposed to many meetings where we have food from foreign countries with no understanding of what we’re eating or the story behind them. And so for me that mattered that we retained, that we didn’t, neither one of us had a formal or informal understanding of what launching a business was. We had to learn everything from scratch. I didn’t know how to do a budget, I didn’t know how to do marketing, any of that. So one of the biggest hurdles was figuring out how to sustain and we’re still working on it, how to sustain Sina financially, especially to ensure that our chefs stayed engaged because we have another book coming up, another documentary coming up. But in that gap in between, we needed a way to ensure that our chefs were feeling financially and emotionally supported.

Joshua Ross:

So what were some of the surprises going down your business journey? Anything that stuck out to you? Anything that you’re like, wow, if I’d known this, maybe I wouldn’t have kept going.

Julia Roncoroni:

We had many moments of what are we doing here? I think what kept us going was community as always, because community kept coming back and saying, what you’re doing is, and we didn’t launch with that idea. We still don’t have that vision of this is great and we’re going to be great. But people kept coming back and saying, can you do a workshop at our library? Can you do a workshop at my company? Can you do a dinner at? And every time we had this why type moment. And I think again, having mentors, we worked with a business school here at the University of Denver a lot, and they’ve helped mentor us too on saying, this can go national. And again, every time we’ve had to say, am relinquishing to your vision, right? I’m surrendering to your vision of we hope it’s true. We have fun doing it, we trust the idea and that’s what carries us forward more maybe than the vision of financially this is how we’re going to be doing into, if that makes sense.

Joshua Ross:

It does. It sounds like a lot of it is, as you said, community, but the impact you’re feeling of what you’re doing. And then people validating it by coming back and talking and saying, we need something like this.

Julia Roncoroni:

We always say at our dinners, because people will come in and say, sorry, it came again. I’m like, no, thank you, but I brought my friend. That’s it. We win. So for us, our victory is right there. And this brought enough awareness to you and it moved something in you enough that now you feel like your friend would benefit from it too. And so to me, when you asked earlier about social impact, that’s the win. It’s the racing awareness and the keeping people coming back to support our chefs.

Joshua Ross:

So all small businesses and impact businesses all struggle with something that’s really important. Resources, human resources, financial resources, partners, and you’re doing a lot of different things. Dinners, workshops, DEI, trainings. Your cookbook was the number one release on Amazon. Shout out. Well done. So as you look at all of these, how do you balance them? How do you give equal time or are you able to give equal time and what the business model look like to sustain them all? And is there a financial component to each to sustain them all? I know I packed a lot in that question,

Julia Roncoroni:

And I laugh too because it’s when people say, how do you separate life? And I don’t know how we do it. We do it. We’ve structured an ecosystem where different revenues feed into each other, and so book sales have helped. We originally donated a hundred percent of our book sales. So all of 2024, we donated all the profit from the book to Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. And starting in 2025, we worked with them to make a different arrangement so that now we can support Sina a little bit more. But the book sales help fund some of that programming. The dinners bring new audiences to our work again, because you have someone come and then we do a dinner next month and that someone brings a friend. And so that also adds people. And then the workshops are what brings financial sustainability to the work that we do As we scale.

We’re trying to be intentional with the world that we’re living. It’s hard to be intentional in any business, but we try about balancing impact with financial viability. I think, again, having a mentor who’s helping us and coaching us consistently, at least for this period as we scale, has been super supportive. We are working on another book and another documentary that are coming out in September, 2025. We’re also launching our podcast in summer 2025, and we’re trying to secure funding so that we can do another project starting in 2026. Each initiative is designed, like you said, to both generate revenue but also keep social impact in mind.

Joshua Ross:

How are you raising funding? Is it through grants or through different philanthropies?

Julia Roncoroni:

We have grant funding from the University of Denver to create the second book and the second documentary and the podcast. And then the dinners are somewhat self-supported to some extent. We now have a series of three dinners running. We’ve done one and we have one on March 27th and one on April 10th that be are supported by a grant from the state because they wanted to collect the stories of immigrants. And so we worked it out enough that we can produce state archives, but at the same time keep community engaged.

Joshua Ross:

Shout out to the state of Colorado and the University of Denver. I love to hear that. So in the process of collecting stories for the cookbooks and these community dinners and getting to know the people that are part of the journey, what are some of the most surprising or moving stories you’ve learned from these chefs? And I know we talked about one, the family coming across through the dairy and jungle, but any other things that you’ve learned either in their journey or why they’re here? And then finally, and you’re going to have to do this, do you have a favorite recipe?

Julia Roncoroni:

That’s a hard question. I’ll start with the easier part. We worked with 29 chefs from 10 different countries for book one. All of the stories were moving in their own ways, right? Stories of people sitting at the border of Ukraine trying to get out in the context of the war. People being separated from, we worked with vi Tovan who has DACA at this point, but he’s a strong community advocate and immigrant rights advocate whose father and brother were deported. We worked with Sper from Venezuela who crossed the Darion jungle dreaming of being a baker. And he’s now one of the chefs who’s found full-time employment in the food industry through Cocina Libre. So many stories that are very challenging, and I think that these stories all show persistence and the power of food as a connection to home. Part of what we did in the documentary one that we created was having and what we’re doing again in documentary two, probably talking about how does sharing your food help you share your identity, right?

Because if you think of Mexican food, for example, people talk about queso and guacamole and chips, but there’s no understanding of all the nuances that come with Mexican food. And it’s the same with pretty much any country that we talk about. And so how do we use food to tell those stories of diversity from different countries, but also from within Mexico, from within Venezuela, et cetera. I don’t have a favorite recipe. My 9-year-old will tell you that we were sitting in the garden and she says, you know what? The best part of your shave. And I’m thinking now she’s going to say community. Now she could have say the food mama, the food that kid. So I do think we get to eat the bur of Chaves. We get to eat phenomenal food. I can think of we’ve had apa, we’ve had Ethiopian food, we’ve had had just so many desserts from all over the world. It’s been a really fun ride that way.

Joshua Ross:

You mentioned a number of the immigrants that you’ve interacted with and that have been part of this story have had the opportunity to get full-time employment. How difficult is it for immigrants to start a food business in the US and what are some of the struggles that we may not know if we’re looking from the outside that they go through? And is it even possible?

Julia Roncoroni:

It’s possible even if you’re not documented, which I think is something that people often don’t know or forget yet. Immigrants face many barriers including language because although often our Colorado government pages are in English and Spanish, the literacy level is inaccessible for many of our chefs. Legal work requirements is another one because we need specific paperwork and you need to know what that paperwork is and when to show it and how to show it. Lack of access to capital, because many of our immigrants don’t come with enough money to start a business and then unfamiliarity with regulations, right? I’ll say coming from Argentina, that’s one thing that shocked me. The rules are very, very, very different in the US and it makes sense that they would be, but at the same time, if you don’t speak English and you’re not familiar with those rules, it’s easy to misstep.

And so many very talented chefs are not able to legally sell their food because they struggle with accessing a commercial kitchen or getting the permits that they need to operate. What I think we do at Cocina is offer that both the financial means so that they can access that training and also the sustained support. And this is how you can get the permit, this is the permit that they’re asking for. Also the visibility, because it is very challenging for many of our chefs to access people who would hire them for catering, who would book their events, et cetera. And then we also offer connections to resources. So who would know the answer to your question? Hold on. I think I got it. And so helping bridge some of that, all the profit Sina is used to offer immigrant chefs the professional culinary training that they need and also support in getting the necessary licenses. And so this helps them with building independence and building sustainability.

Joshua Ross:

So we’re sitting here in five years, we’re talking about Cocina. What does Cocina look like in five years from now?

Julia Roncoroni:

We want to expand our programming. We’re working on releasing that second book and the second documentary in 2025, thinking of how do we establish the podcast? So we now are recording 20 episodes. How do we establish this as something that is a revenue generating platform? How do we also provide more structured support for chefs? So at this point we’re starting and so kind of meeting chefs where they are and they’re meeting us where we are, but building a structure that is more sustainable. And then we also want to work on a transnational mothering project. I’m licensed as a psychologist and work often with moms who are Latina and primarily Spanish speaking. And many of them have had children in other countries and have come with one of those children, but left another kiddo back or brought all of them but then had to be separated and the kiddos went back or they left all. And so for me, I’m really intrigued by the experience of transnational mothering and hoping that our next casino project can involve some of those moms.

Joshua Ross:

I love it. Those are very big goals, but very important goals. You’re an entrepreneur, you’re an innovator, you are a creator, and you’ve done amazing things. And here at the university, we have a lot of students that are really interested in moving humanity forward, making an impact and creating something of value. So what advice would you give? Not just the students here, but people listening to this podcast that want to do something, make an impact.

Julia Roncoroni:

You’re not going to like me for my response, but I will say that I think often we teach business the wrong way because we teach students to identify an area of need and work around the area of need as to training our students to learn and figure out who they are and then work from there. When I say that Cocina took off, and then I mean literally we spent the fall chasing and we still are working on it, chasing it like a toddler, right? Cocina came from who we were. And so I think for students it is starting with their lived experience and their passion. Not every fight is your fight. You should be supporting other people’s work and other people’s struggles, but what is core to you? What is important to you so that your projects come from that place of authenticity? Being prepared to learn as they go.

Being an entrepreneur is extraordinarily challenging. It can be extraordinarily fun, but it requires a lot of flexibility of who do I ask for help? Wow, this didn’t turn out the way that I thought it would anywhere from you post something on Instagram and bam, it’s flat on your face or backwards, you’re shocked by the amount of response, or you do a training and no one shows up and the next week you do another training and you are sold out. And so it’s riding some of those very challenging waves. I think operating from integrity and a vision of what your values are as opposed to the financial impact. I think so often we talk about this is how you build a pro forma and this is financially where you should be in a year, two years, five years, hopefully. But also what are things that you would like to see happen and that would make you happy regardless of revenue? And if the revenue comes with it, then awesome. But if not, you leave this experience saying, I’ve succeeded either way, if that makes sense.

Joshua Ross:

It makes a lot of sense. And I actually agree with what you said at the very beginning. The way I look at it is our students that we try to teach them is how to identify problems and how do I identify solutions and they actually solving a problem or that actually makes an impact, and are they truly clear about who they’re solving it for? Those are the types of things in reframing the problems. And so that’s what I like to teach. And your comment about their lived experience is very important. But what I truly believe is they don’t have much lived experience when by the time they graduate at 22. So they need to go out into the world and get experience and interact with people because when they graduate, let’s say with an undergraduate degree, they’ve been in school for 17 years, that’s their world now. Go out and travel, interact with people, get a job, whatever it is, and then take those tools that you hopefully learn in terms of problem identification, rephrase design thinking, understanding who your target market is, talking to people about your ideas, and hopefully using those tools to solve something of impact.

Julia Roncoroni:

Yeah, absolutely.

Joshua Ross:

So the way you look at it, I think is right, and your comment about being flexible is so important because every day is a different challenge. It’s a different high and it’s a very different low. And you’ve got to just kind of balance those out. Otherwise you want, it’s very difficult to get out of bed.

Julia Roncoroni:

And again, remember why you’re doing it. That’s why I said stay true to who you are, because what you bring to the picture is so fundamental to not gaining when you’re feeling like we have many moments of we quit because this is too much work, because this is too hard, because this is, why are we doing this? We were full-time employee W as a teacher and I’m faculty at du, we would be just fine financially. We’re not doing it for the money for us. It is why are we And reminding each other too, right? So finding people that you trust that will call you out when you have those low lows.

Joshua Ross:

Before we end this conversation, where can our audience find out about Cocina?

Julia Roncoroni:

We’re everywhere online at this point. Our book is on Amazon, target online, Walmart, online, Barnes and Noble. We also have it at physical bookstores like title cover. We have it at the bookies. And we have a website, Cocina re collective, that’s Cocina, C-O-C-I-N-A, Libra, L-I-B-R-E collective.com. And there we have links to our books, links to our documentary, the podcast, and all of our events.

Joshua Ross:

Well, Julia, thank you for your time and thank you for what you and your partner are doing. This is very impressive.

Julia Roncoroni:

Thank you so much. We appreciate you hosting.

Joshua Ross:

The entrepreneurship at DU podcast was recorded in Marjorie Reed Hall on the University of Denver campus. You can find us on Instagram at du Entrepreneur on Twitter, x at DU entrepreneur, and on Facebook at entrepreneurship at du. This episode was engineered, edited, and produced by Sophia Holt. Entrepreneurship at DU is part of the Daniels College of Business, which has its own podcast. Check out Voices of Experience wherever you get your podcasts.