Delaware Latino grocery store turns produce aisle into a music stage

Fiesta Fresh Market in northern Delaware is drawing attention for a format that treats ordinary shopping space as a performance venue. During a recent show, a bilingual alternative pop band performed for a small audience alongside stacks of produce, as the store’s monthly Mercadito sessions brought music into the produce aisle.

Owner Jose Luis Aguilar Garcia said he hoped the concerts would spotlight Latino communities in a way that goes beyond headlines focused on immigration enforcement. He described the series as a way to show “the persistence of joy and creativity in Latino communities,” arguing that Latino stories are often brought up only in that enforcement context.

Garcia said he has spent much of his life moving between food and music. Born in Mexico, he grew up in an apartment near the spot where he would later open Fiesta Fresh Market, and he worked in farmers markets and grocery stores before running a photography and videography business that also produced regional Mexican music including mariachi, corridos tumbados and banda.

He said music was a long-running passion project, but that Delaware did not offer an obvious industry pathway for it. “We did a lot of quinceañeras, weddings, that sort of thing,” Garcia said. “Music was always like something I wanted to do as a passion project, but especially here in Delaware, there’s really no industry for that,” he said.

Garcia linked the store’s concert concept to his earlier exposure to a mainstream “Tiny Desk Concert” style setup. In 2023, an artist on Garcia’s label, DannyLux, was invited to perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, a semi-private series filmed at the NPR bureau in Washington, D.C., which is then released for a wider audience. Garcia said that experience helped him recognize the appeal of an unconventional acoustic format, and he opened Fiesta Fresh Market in 2024 with his sister and father, later blending what he learned from Tiny Desk performances with the store he created.

Garcia said the early Mercadito sessions were difficult to sell to artists because the performance context was unusual. He said that in April, all of the acts scheduled for that show had heard about the store through social media before they were asked to perform, suggesting growing interest in the premise beyond the local area.

While the sessions initially leaned heavily toward Spanish-language music from Garcia’s label, Garcia said the lineup expanded over time to include a broader range of artists and genres. “I found that super interesting that no matter who the artist was that was playing, people would gather to hear,” Garcia said.

One of the late April performers was Luna Luna, a band recognized by outlets including Billboard and Rolling Stone. Their stop on a broad U.S. tour featured a setting that differed sharply from the typical stages and lighting for indie-pop ballads. Large piñatas hung above the group as they performed under the store’s fluorescent lighting, with shoppers able to move in the background as Luna Luna sang in Spanish and English.

For Luna Luna’s lead singer, Kavvi Gonzalez, Garcia’s grocery-aisle approach also carried personal resonance. Gonzalez, who was born in Colombia and moved to Texas when she was 6, said: “I actually grew up shopping at stores like this, so to be able to play in one is kind of crazy,” and she said the charm came from what she described as the “surprising romance of the mundane.”

Gonzalez said the arrangement keeps everyday life present while the band performs. “To see people just actually be shopping around and just living regular life while we’re doing a performance here, you know, it’s cool. It’s combining real life and music culture,” Gonzalez said.