When Ana Gallego and Eliton De Souza started Sky Market and Butcher Shop in Nashua in 2019, they were confident that a store specializing in Brazilian goods and products from other Latin American countries would succeed.
After all, Sabor Brasil, a churrascaria specializing in Brazilian barbeque, has succeeded on Canal Street. However, that restaurant’s success did not necessarily predict the same for a marketplace.
“When we were opening our store, so many people said that it wouldn’t work,” says Gallego in Portunhol—a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish. “Others had tried and failed.
“But there was no store in the area that served Brazilian or Colombian products,” she continues. “But I thought: if there’s a Brazilian restaurant in the area that’s always busy, there must be a sizable Brazilian population.”
Four years later, Gallego and De Souza’s supposition proved correct to the point that the business partners added a café to the site in September, creating a third place accommodating Brazilian and Colombian coffee culture.
“It was a necessity,” she says. “Beyond thinking about our own economic fortunes, we were thinking of the well-being of our community when opening that place.”
Coffee, cassava flour, plantains and many other culturally appropriate products have found a place there. “It’s been a real game changer for the Brazilian community,” says Bruno D’Britto, director of the NH Brazilian Council, in Portuguese. “It’s created a space for them in New Hampshire.”
Apart from occupying an underserved niche in the area’s economy, Gallego credits Sky Market’s success to discipline, planning and knowing what the public it serves wants. “We have a lot of discipline,” she says. “We open at 6 a.m. and close at 9 p.m., and we have a wide-ranging variety of products on sale.
“We are always out there looking for the highest-quality goods at the best price for our consumers,” Gallego says.
“And we are very grateful to the residents of Nashua and those at City Hall for all they’ve done to support us,” De Souza says.
Gallego says that NH has developed a reputation as a state that is unfriendly to immigrants, but that is not the state she has come to know during her time here. “My experience has been the opposite of that,” she says. “I have been very well accepted by the White population.
Gallego hopes the store’s success serves as an example of what’s possible. “Immigrant or native-born, documented or undocumented, you can be successful here with discipline and consistency,” she says.
Current Issue - May 2024