They Kept Getting Rejected. So They Built Los Perejiles Instead.
Four guys walk into a job market. They’re turned away. Then again. Then again.
At some point, the rejection stops feeling personal and starts feeling systemic. That’s where Mateo, Franco, Mauricio, and Leandro were.
In Argentina, people with disabilities face an employment wall that most employers don’t bother explaining. You apply. You interview. You don’t get called back. Repeat. According to local data, a large percentage of Argentinians with disabilities are pushed out of the formal workforce entirely — not because they can’t do the work, but because the door never opens long enough to find out.
These four weren’t waiting anymore.
They Built the Table Instead
In 2016, Mateo, Franco, Mauricio, and Leandro launched Los Perejiles — a pizza catering company out of Buenos Aires. Not a storefront. Not a franchise. A full catering operation: their own oven, their own uniforms, their own setup, showing up to events ready to work.
Within two months, they had catered nearly 30 events. They built an audience online before most small businesses figure out how to post consistently. They weren’t asking for a shot anymore. They were earning one — repeatedly, in front of real clients with real expectations.
And then they did the thing that separates a hustle from a movement: they hired.
Los Perejiles created jobs for other people facing the same wall they had climbed over. That’s not a footnote. That’s the whole point.
The Barrier Was Never Ability
At Breaking Free Industries, we run a screen printing and embroidery shop in Santa Ana staffed by people rebuilding their lives after incarceration. We’ve heard every version of the same sentence: nobody would give me a chance.
Los Perejiles heard it too. In a different country, a different context, a different barrier — but the same closed door.
What they proved, and what we try to prove every day, is that the limitation was never in the people being turned away. It was in the systems doing the turning. When you remove the gatekeepers and let people work, they do more than survive — they build.
Thirty events in two months. Growing payroll. An expanding operation. From four guys who couldn’t get hired to a company creating employment for others. That’s not an inspirational exception. That’s what happens when opportunity shows up.
Second Chances Look Different Everywhere
April is Second Chance Month. We usually talk about it in the context of criminal justice — and we will keep doing that. But second chances belong to anyone who’s been counted out by a system that wasn’t built with them in mind.
Mateo, Franco, Mauricio, and Leandro weren’t looking for charity. They were looking for work. When work wouldn’t come to them, they manufactured it — literally.
That’s the spirit we recognize.
If you’re building something and need custom apparel to show the world who you are — let’s talk. We print for teams, nonprofits, small businesses, and people who are building something worth wearing.
Made in Orange County. By people who earned their shot.