by Betsabe Segovia
Manuel Batista came to the United States from the Dominican Republic with a single objective: to become a successful businessman. His family was kind, noble, and hardworking, but destitute, what distinguished him was his passion and ability to work.
He reached his goal years after arriving in the United States in 1996 for his first job cleaning offices and buildings, an activity that later would be the foundation of his first enterprise: his own cleaning business called “Star Cleaning”. Later on he opened up his second business in collecting waste called “Orange Waste Management”.
Never stopping, he went on to open and eventually close “Caribe” his first night club. “Without failure you will never earn success”, he strongly believes, which led him to open other night clubs like “DJ’s” and “Le Mule”. Later on he found what his true passion was: Restaurants.
His motivation in opening the restaurant was loving the ability to control every part of the process from buying the ingredients, and managing the operational logistics up to the customer’s final satisfaction. With this experience he then decided to open the first of what is now a well-known restaurant chain in our community “Sushi Madre”, which soon will have its fourth establishment in Laredo.
As Mr. Batista’s career and businesses have grown, so has his family. His children have grown up learning from the dedication and sweat his father has put into creating and operating his businesses and they are now successful on their own. His middle son Jairo is now in Law school in New York City and his daughter Sheila is a forensic sociologist in New York. He still has two younger daughters named Natalia who is 12 and in middle school, and Kasandra who is 10 and in elementary school. They are both in the National Honor Society Program and Kasandra is now president of the program. They both have great talents in piano classes, dance and other extracurricular activities. His children are his motivation and he continues to work hard for them. “Seeing my kid’s success is a dream come true”, he tells us.
Mr. Batista still frequently goes to visit and help his family that remains in the Dominican Republic, where he had his first dreams of becoming a successful businessman. Today, the favorite part of his career is that he can travel the world and get creative ideas for his restaurants which he plans on opening in other places outside of Laredo, including in Mexico.
Mr. Manuel Batista never planned out his career, he just kept working hard and managed to get to where he is today by facing challenges and capitalizing opportunities one day at a time. With many productive years still ahead of him, Mr. Batista is now starting to dream of a comfortable retirement plan, after teaching his children how hard work, dedication, sacrifice, vision and never-ending commitment are the ingredients of success.
“Being successful is hard, but if you believe in yourself and have faith and strength you can do anything. I am blessed I came to the United States so I can now live the American Dream with my family” he says with a sigh of satisfaction.
