How the Mmm Churros! family is recuperating— and making great food—after a tragic loss
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBERT ELIASON
Mike Jones never imagined his lifelong love of churros would inspire him to launch a burgeoning business with his wife and high school sweetheart, Priscilla.
He never thought their idea, Mmm Churros!, would evolve into a festival-favorite pop-up and then a café, giving them a permanent place to get creative with their preferred dessert. He also never imagined doing any of it without Priscilla by his side.
CRUSHING NEWS
After years of working tirelessly to create Mmm Churros!, and right after opening a brand new storefront in their adopted hometown of Hollister, the Jones family was dealt an unquantifiable loss.
In October 2024, eight days after the opening of their store on Tres Pinos Road, Priscilla—a beacon in their family and community— died in a car accident. She was driving to her primary job as a graveyard shift 911 dispatcher.
Everything at Mmm stopped.
After a couple months of processing and soul searching, Jones reopened the doors. His ongoing hope is to keep the vision he and his wife shared alive for their kids.
He also doesn’t know exactly what else to do.
PURIST LOVE
Long before Mike and Priscilla met and fell in love as teenagers, they forged fond memories of frequenting the area’s many churro carts with their families around East San Jose.
Once they married and had a family of their own, they’d often take their little ones to experience the joys of Disneyland. When they saw churros around the park and shared their favorite dessert with their kids, they realized good churros weren’t guaranteed.
“We know what an authentic churro tastes like and this was not it,” Mike says. “So I told [Priscilla], ‘We should make churros.’”
A hazy version of a family business had been floating around for years. Then one night Priscilla sketched out a logo and things started feeling real. The couple began serious conversations about the venture while drawing up a business plan.
This was all in between raising their three children, Priscilla’s fulltime role as a law enforcement and medical dispatcher for Santa Clara County, and Mike’s job in sales and distribution for corporations like Coca-Cola and FritoLay.
The first big step: develop the recipe. Over two years, Mike learned how to dial in temperature and time, working toward their vision for an ideal churro—with a crispy-crunchy outside and delightfully fluffy interior—just like he and Priscilla loved growing up.
“I’m not a baker or anything, so this was a lot of trial and error,” Mike says. “It would be a lot of nights staying up making dough and texting my wife—while she was working—about how the batches were coming out.”
From there, they product tested in the neighborhood and started selling out of their home. At first they offered boxes of a dozen, as well as shapes like hearts, short “bites” and flavors that included oldschool cinnamon sugar and experimental varieties like grape and watermelon.
When the pandemic hit, they went all in. Mike quit his job and the couple put their stimulus checks—and their free time—into the operation.
“That’s the only thing that we [had] to get started,” he says.
The Jones family hustled around the clock to fill the growing number of orders. While Mike ran the operation fulltime, Priscilla juggled many roles.
On any given day she fielded 911 calls all night, then helped run the business and be what her friends described as a “super woman and super mom.”
In addition to her work, she played an active role in her kids’ school events (often with churros in hand), participated in organizations like the Downtown Association and even launched a neighborhood watch.
“Priscilla was one of those moms who seemed to tackle anything head on, and with grace…she was one in a million.”
LEVEL UP
As events re-emerged post-pandemic, the Joneses went mobile. Farmers markets and catering gigs turned into bigger and bigger events. The family’s positive energy, obsession with their craft and unique products helped them form relationships in the event world, and before long Mmm Churros! was an official partner of the Monterey Bay Football Club, and a regular fixture at the annual California Roots Music & Art Festival.
“Mmm Churros! was easy to work with, but—more importantly—Priscilla and Mike inspire us, and often all of their kids were in the booth working right alongside,” says Amy Sheehan, Cali Roots co-owner and co-producer. “Priscilla was one of those moms who seemed to tackle anything head on, and with grace…she was one in a million.”
As their churros took off, the next phase came into focus: a café that served churro affogatos, and other pastries in the morning, and stayed open late for desserts like decadent churro sundaes and hot chocolate.
A stable home kitchen would allow them to keep their crowd pleasers (like their box of churros and churro bite bowls) and expand on the creative confections they had become known for—churros filled with caramel and topped with crushed peanuts and chocolate drizzle, and a bowl of churro bites topped with bacon bits and maple syrup.
When the opportunity to open a brickand- mortar in Salinas presented itself in 2023, they went for it. After a successful year in Salinas, plus an active pop-up schedule, they jumped at the chance to relocate the business to Hollister.
REMEMBERING WHY
Their opening day in October 2024 was one to remember. Friends, family and community members came out to support, as did many regular customers.
“In the midst of the chaos in opening a new location, I was forced to stop and take it all in when I saw my youngest baby sleeping in the window as I walked up,” Priscilla wrote in an Instagram post after opening. “I was stressed beyond measure from working literally all night, running errands and fighting traffic to make it back in time. But the sight of this sweet little face sleeping so innocently in the window made me literally stop in my tracks and think back to why we do what we do.”
Then, just a few days later, everything changed. Mike and his children received the worst news they could get. Sympathy, tributes, prayers, memories and support flooded in. Hundreds of people attended the candlelight vigil for Priscilla the day after her accident.
For a while, Mike didn’t know if he had the heart to continue the business. He sometimes doesn’t know how he can keep going.
“It’s extremely difficult every day. The feeling of being here without her isn’t right,” he says. “She was unstoppable. She would work a 14-hour shift and then come to the business. She wanted to be here. And she knew it could be what we wanted it to be.”
Fueled by his drive to uphold Priscilla’s memory, he decided to reopen the shop in early December, and the Mmm Churros! community came out to show their love.
Mike also plans to dive back into a pop-up schedule come springtime and continue bringing his family’s creative take on churros to events throughout the region.
Though things will never feel normal again, he gets through it by remembering what drives him.
“Our main reason for doing this was our kids, everything we do is for them— make sure you know your why,” he says.
“I got hit with a hard blow of losing my wife, and the kids losing their mom. It’s about taking the time to think about why we did it in the first place and continuing the legacy for her.”
About the author
Ashley Drew Owen is a writer and Massachusetts transplant. Her passion for learning about local food is only overshadowed by her passion for writing about or eating it. Safe to say, she is a lover of food and words, and also driving very fast in the left lane.
