You are Marisol Elizondo Vega, chief financial officer of Grupo Alimentos Bárcena, a family-owned food maker in Guadalajara, Mexico. You have three investments on your desk, MX$120 million in cash and eighteen days until the Family Council votes on your plan. Before you rank anything, your one-page baseline must say which limit will bind your plan hardest.
The situation
Don Esteban Bárcena founded the company in 1979: premium salsas, moles and ready meals for Mexican supermarket chains and, increasingly, the U.S. Hispanic market. Today it employs 1,150 people across plants in Guadalajara and Querétaro, and belongs to the second and third generations through a family holding, with a Family Council and a shareholders' agreement signed in 2024. In 2025 it posted revenue of MX$4,200 million on EBITDA of MX$588 million. Its cost of capital is about 13.5% a year in pesos.
The three proposals: a new line in Querétaro for MX$240 million, adding about MX$95 million of EBITDA a year; buying a co-packer in Texas for MX$180 million, the fastest route to serving a U.S. retailer's offer of a listing in 1,400 stores; and automating Guadalajara for MX$90 million, adding about MX$40 million of EBITDA a year at the lowest execution risk. Any investment above MX$200 million needs the full Council's approval.
Two rules frame any financing. Net debt is about 1.2 times EBITDA, and the agreement allows up to 2.5 times. And the MX$180 million dividend has been paid without a break for 46 years: one branch of the family, four cousins with no role in the business, lives on it and has let it be known it could force a buyout of its shares, estimated at about MX$900 million, if it is cut without their agreement. There are other sources too: a bank loan, a share placement with a non-family investor, or selling and leasing back the Guadalajara plant.