{"id":400939,"date":"2026-09-15T23:38:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T23:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/400939\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T23:38:39","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T23:38:39","slug":"hispanic-owned-businesses-continue-growing-in-tampa-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/400939\/","title":{"rendered":"Hispanic-owned businesses continue growing in Tampa Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Blind Tiger Coffee Roasters owner Roberto Torres is using his experience growing a business across the Tampa Bay area to mentor other Hispanic entrepreneurs working to turn their ideas into businesses.<\/p>\n<p>Torres immigrated from Panama at age 18 and said starting over in a country where he did not know anyone was difficult.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of people don\u2019t necessarily understand how hard it is to leave behind your loved ones, so what I did is delve into the work,\u201d said Torres, president of <a href=\"https:\/\/blindtigercoffeeroasters.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Blind Tiger Coffee Roasters.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>That work led him to open a men\u2019s boutique in 2008. The business later evolved into Blind Tiger Coffee Roasters in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>What began as one coffee shop has grown to nine locations across the Tampa Bay area.<\/p>\n<p>Torres said Blind Tiger served nearly 1 million people last year. \u201cWe want to make sure that every customer is taken care of,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n<p>Torres said building a business as a Latino entrepreneur came with challenges, especially access to money.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the first one is access to capital,\u201d Torres said. \u201cWe open these businesses on credit cards, on borrowed money; we open it on nights and weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In Florida, there are more than 600,000 Hispanic-owned businesses, a number the <a href=\"https:\/\/sbdctampabay.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Small Business Development Center<\/a> says is continuing to grow in the Tampa Bay area.<\/p>\n<p>Eileen Rodriguez, a business consultant with the <a href=\"https:\/\/sbdctampabay.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Florida SBDC<\/a> at USF Muma College of Business, said Hispanic-owned businesses span many industries. \u201cThey are in construction, they are in education, they\u2019re in professional services, just about every business in general that you can find,\u201d Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n<p>Rodriguez said the center helped more than 900 businesses that identified as Hispanic last year, offering guidance on topics including how to start a business and how to find financial resources.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we find is a lot of Hispanic businesses were not formal, if you will, in their countries, and they come here and they find yes, there is a lot of red tape,\u201d Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n<p>She said language can be another barrier for some business owners.<\/p>\n<p>The SBDC offers one-on-one assistance in Spanish to Hispanic entrepreneurs navigating the process of starting a business.<\/p>\n<p>Its next virtual business course is scheduled for Oct. 27.<\/p>\n<p>Torres said he now dedicates some of his time to mentoring other Hispanic entrepreneurs trying to build their own businesses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s the idea of doing business with each other and doing business for each other,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n<p>For Torres, the business is not only about serving coffee but also about creating a community. \u201cWe believe that what we want to do is for this to be a hub for creatives,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Blind Tiger Coffee Roasters owner Roberto Torres is using his experience growing a business across&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2031,274,558,276,2200,6076,115,135,137,136,278,2032,835],"class_list":["post-400939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-local-business","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-lizbeth-gutierrez","tag-news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}