Lupita Rios’ shop Pita’s Planters. Photography by Lauren Allen
Lupita Rios had it all planned out.
Graduate from Bryan Adams High School. Move from East Dallas to Providence, Rhode Island. Graduate from Brown University. Go to UT Southwestern’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Get a PhD in neuroscience. Become a professor.
The only thing she hadn’t planned for was the anxiety.
As a way to cope with life after undergrad, Rios started caring for plants. She enjoyed propagating and growing them in a self-built backyard greenhouse. Then she started making pots for the plants she was growing.
“And little by little I started giving them away and people were like, ‘Wait, this is so cute. This is so neat. You should try selling it,’” Rios says.
Her creativity was invigorated and perhaps more importantly, her anxiety eased.
“It was very healing for me,” she says.
In 2019, Rios launched a pop-up, really a small table with pots and plants, outside Bishop Arts District’s CocoAndre. It was named Pita’s Planters, after her family’s pet name for her.
“It was kind of like a hobby that turned into a business,” she says. “It brought so much joy to me when I was going through a really difficult time and I really thought I wouldn’t feel joy again… Plants tend to be that for a lot of people. It’s like a way to connect with nature again and a way to heal.”
One year later, Pita’s Planters moved into a 16-foot-wide mobile trailer, often parked at the farmers market, with the help of her boyfriend David Hernadez. Also a Bryan Adams alum, he had been helping with pop-ups and helping make pots.
Sales were increasing, Lupita was managing the company and still working towards a PhD in neuroscience full time.
She couldn’t do it alone. So Hernandez, who was working in commercial construction and did fitness training on the side, suggested he quit his job, and they move on from the trailer to look for a brick-and-mortar store.
Hernandez, a University of Texas Moody College of Communication alum, says he was never satisfied with the idea of a nine-to-five job post-grad.
In September 2023, the small green shop opened its storefront in Casa Linda Plaza, less than two miles from Bryan Adams High School, where the couple first met, and just 10 minutes from their home.
If you told Hernadez that he’d be co-owning a plant shop as a full-time job, he probably would have looked at you crazy.
“The two of us had no idea what we were doing,” he says.
Insight from his brother, the owner of Cheesesteak House in Garland, and his gym coach, Brent Carter who owns Starting Strength Dallas, helped.
Since opening, the shop has attracted local residents to international shoppers visiting the website.
There are over 100 plant varieties to choose from, plus pots made from upcycled glass bottles, crochet plants, locally-made jewelry, mugs, dried decorative flowers and stationery.
Whitney Gonzales, best friend and former lab partner from J.L. Long Middle School says she was thrilled when she heard Rios was opening a store.
A fellow plant enthusiast (she owns over 40 plants), Gonzales says she’s been amazed by all the store has to offer.
“The fact that she handmakes pretty much everything like her pots, I like that,” Gonzales says. “That’s why I buy from her, because I know that they’re not mass-produced.”
Hernandez says Rios has always been the “go-getter” for the establishment, continuously pushing the business to grow every day.
“She was the one making moves like, ‘Hey let’s get this done. Let’s get going. We need to get this done by this day.’ And kind of kicking my ass into gear,” Hernandez says as he jokes he was just along for the ride.
Rios’ drive is credited to her great-aunt in Guatemala, Laura Lidia Martinez, who raised her for 12 years. Before Rios moved to the U.S. to be with her biological mother, her great-aunt would make tortillas and snacks to sell at the mercado for a living.
“I wanted to make her proud and follow in her footsteps,” she says.
And, yes, she’s still on track to get her PhD in neuroscience, with just two years left. Next, is becoming a professor.
Pita’s Planters is just part of the plan now.
