Our story

A spice cabinet, then a business.

Mamar Specialities began the way most good things do — with a grandmother, a cast-iron skillet, and a lot of quiet Sunday afternoons.

Michelle Ontiveros in her Irvine kitchen

The maker

Michelle Ontiveros, founder.

Michelle grew up in a house where the pantry told the story of the family — jars of chile de árbol from her grandmother's garden in Guanajuato, salt from a small producer near Ensenada, honey from a neighbor's beehives in Riverside. Nothing was ever bought that could be made.

After a decade working in restaurant kitchens across Los Angeles and Orange County, she noticed the spices arriving in commercial pallets bore no resemblance to what she remembered. Dusty, faded, blended with anti-caking agents that dulled every flavor. So in the summer of 2019, she started grinding her own — first for herself, then for the chefs she knew, and finally for a small waitlist of home cooks who somehow kept finding her.

Today, Mamar Specialities operates from a small blending studio attached to her house in Irvine. Every jar is still filled by hand.

What we believe

Four things we won't compromise on.

01 —

Freshness above everything

Ground spices lose more than half of their aromatic oils within four months. We blend to order and never keep milled inventory longer than 30 days. The date on your jar is the date it was made.

02 —

Direct, honest sourcing

We buy from eleven small farms — six in California, three in Baja, two in Oaxaca. We know every grower by name, and we pay above market rate because that's how the model has to work.

03 —

Nothing you can't pronounce

No silicon dioxide. No calcium stearate. No natural flavorings that are anything but. Just whole spices, herbs, salts, sugars and oils — the same short list your grandmother used.

04 —

Packaging that returns to the earth

Recyclable amber glass, uncoated kraft labels, compostable void-fill, cardboard tape. Our whole shipping box breaks down in a home compost bin within 90 days.

A short timeline

Seven years, one very small kitchen.

2019 — Michelle mills her first batch of ancho-cocoa rub for a friend's supper club. Twenty jars sell out in one evening.

2020 — A tiny mailing list grows to 400 households. The garage becomes a spice studio; the neighbors stop asking about the smell of toasted cumin.

2022 — Mamar Specialities is featured in Edible Orange County. Michelle brings on her first two team members — both former line cooks.

2024 — We move into a proper blending studio in Irvine and add cold-infused olive oils to the shelf.

2026 — Twenty-three active blends, four seasonal releases a year, and a waiting list for the holiday gift boxes that we absolutely cannot get through by ourselves anymore.