BROOKLYN.
THE WORLD.
LOIZA SOUL. BROOKLYN RAISED. NUYORICAN PROUD
THE ROOTS RAN
DEEP FROM THE START.
Ivette Rivera was born in Camden, New Jersey — but her story starts in the island towns of Loíza and Arecibo in Puerto Rico, where her family's roots run deep. Both of her parents were part of the great Puerto Rican diaspora of the 1950s — one of the largest migrations in American history, when entire communities packed everything they had and came to New York City chasing a better life.
Her father was as a mechanic — a man who could fix anything with his hands. Her mother found work as a seamstress in the legendary NYC garment factories, threading needles in buildings that hummed with the labor of immigrant women building this country stitch by stitch. They settled in the heart of East New York, Brooklyn — Atlantic Avenue, Pitkin Avenue, Linden Boulevard — a neighborhood alive with the sound of two worlds learning to become one.
"My parents didn't just bring their clothes when they came here. They brought our heritage with them."
— Ivette Rivera, Founder of Bodega Flava®That is why Loíza Foods carries the name it does — not as a trend, not as branding, but as a tribute. To the town in Puerto Rico where her ancestors forged ahead despite the colonization of Europeans and the trauma of the Middle Passage. To parents who sacrificed everything. To a culture that survived the diaspora and thrived in Brooklyn anyway.
Ivette's childhood was short. She became a mother at 17 — and from that moment forward, giving up was never an option. She was attending broadcasting school in Philadelphia while living as a squatter in an abandoned house in North Philly with her infant daughter. No safety net. No fallback. Just a young mother who refused to let her circumstances define her ceiling.
"I had a baby, no roof that was really mine, and a dream. I chose the dream — for both of us."
— Ivette Rivera, Founder of Bodega Flava®Her daughter was two and a half years old when the offer came in from Q102 Philadelphia — and that job was everything. It was the door out of that abandoned house. It was stability. It was proof that the dream was real. Ivette became one of the youngest morning show producers in the Philadelphia radio market, and she never looked back.
In those studios, she moved fast, read rooms, and learned instinctively what made people stop, listen, and feel something. That gift—learned the hard way, forged in North Philly—never left her. Because long before she was producing the morning show, she was a kid on a stoop, learning that everything has a rhythm.
Growing up, Saturday mornings had a ritual. The moms would send the kids outside while they cleaned—and the whole block became alive with children running, playing, and belonging to the neighborhood while El Gran Combo, Earth, Wind & Fire, Hall & Oates and Willie Colón poured out of every open window. The music didn't choose between cultures — and neither did the block. That Saturday morning energy — joy, community, the smell of something good cooking — is baked into every jar of Bodega Flava® Latin Seasonings.
