«In Loja, the most important town of the Poniente Granadino, borned Congelados Apolo in 1963, as an exciting project conceived by a just married couple, Apolonio Alcaide and Ana Ávila.
A house of Madrid that in those days was dedicated to create the first frozen shops in Spain, called Congelados Niza, give us the opportunity to start this kind of business. We were the first one in the Granada region and one of the first in Andalusia in work with frozen seafood and other food.
After opening, the first days we had a lot of curious people who wanted to know what they were, they called them «the taut fishes». In our beginning, by the ignorance around the frozen food, there are more people that come to our shop to look than to buy. We had a bad streak, as all the beginning are, but the experts advise us that we had to stand because the frozen food were the future.
In these moment, we started to cut up whiting in slice and to pack it in half kilo bags; also we done it with squid, ray, hake and peeled shrimp, that in 100 grammes. We serve small orders to shops, because their frozen red it was limited to domestic refrigerators. Our means of transportation were a moto Guzzy and a Renault 4. Then the chests of frozen arrive to the market y with them our salvation.
This was our beginning. After two hard and long years, we start to take off. We registered our brand, Apolo, and our whole life we dedicate to work hard for our business, which we both wanted and so much effort took us to raise, to grow day by day.
After several extensions, the passing of the years, the constancy of the work and thanks to the push of the nephews, who in 1983 entered to form part of the project, today we can boast of having a great company and that the brand Mariscos y Congelados Apolo has recognition in Spain, and increasingly in other countries. Apolo, which is what I affectionately called muy husband, he would be very proud”.
Ana Ávila
