The story begins in 1940 when Jesús Michel González and Elvira Velasco Rolón, both originally from Jalisco, sought in Guadalajara the opportunity to start a candy business that would allow them to support their extended family due to the need to close a business they had in San Marcos. Don Jesús learned to make formulas working in a pharmaceutical company and at first they started with scented pills, but, as sales were not what they expected, they opted to make marshmallow popsicles and guitar-shaped candies. Those sweets were distributed in local stores.
It was not until 1950 that the couple began to make the famous marzipan and it was a success. In Mexico, traditional marzipan is a sweet baked in the oven, made with almond paste, pumpkin seeds or ground peanuts with sugar. Jesús Michel knew the recipe for almond marzipan, but that seed was very expensive, so he modified the formula to use peanuts to make the cost more economical. At first, marzipan was produced in copper pots, in small houses adapted as workshops, which were operated by 10 people and there were more than 25 in the entire city of Guadalajara. The candy, in the end, was wrapped by hand and distributed from store to store.
“That recipe was passed down to the family”, “Only we can make that flavor. We are four brothers in the family who have this recipe; nobody else". It is recounted by the current director and partner of Dulces de la Rosa, Enrique Michel Velasco
The marzipans were sold unbranded, wrapped in silver paper (white on one side and gold on the other). However, as the business grew, the requirements for the Michel family sweets changed, as the packaging had to indicate the name of the company and the address where they were manufactured. So they were labeled with the Conitas brand and with three illustrated strawberries. However, they had to change the name because another company that also sold marzipan and had the logo with three cherries threatened to sue, arguing that they caused confusion.
Jesús Michel was not one of legal fights, so he decided to put a rose on it because there was a campaign that identified Guadalajara as the city of roses. People gave the name to the marzipan since in the store they asked for "the one with the rose." This is how the famous sweet and the factory that also makes other sweets ended up called "Dulces de la Rosa" since the brand was Conitas ... but the town gave it the name "de la Rosa"