ROCHESTER, N.Y. — National Hispanic Heritage Month is underway, celebrating the culture and history of local Hispanic communities. It runs from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15.

News10NBC is highlighting local Hispanic-owned businesses this month including Juan & Maria’s Empanada Stop. It has been 24 years since Juan and Maria Contreras started the restaurant at the Rochester Public Market, bringing the Chilean Empanada to the community.

The Contreras family got the idea of starting the business after Juan brought empanadas to his co-owners at Xerox almost 50 years ago.

“The rest was history, lots of empanadas later,” Juan said.

The parents have now passed the business onto their son Ben Contreras, the current owner, who says the business allows the family to share their culture. Ben said he’s seen the same people who went to Juan & Maria’s as kids now all grown up.

He says each of the 21 Spanish speaking countries has unique culture including food and National Hispanic Heritage Month allows communities to celebrate it. His parents grew up in Chile and came to Rochester. Ben was born in Rochester but lived in South America for his junior and senior year of high school, which allowed him to absorb his family’s culture.

“It really gave me a unique look on the Latin culture, my father’s culture, and it really impacted my life truly,” he said.

Juan & Maria’s typically serves almost 2,000 empanadas of all different varieties every Saturday at the Rochester Public Market.

“When you consider where we started, it used to be maybe 20 to 30 empanadas during the whole day, because Rochester didn’t know what empanadas were,” Juan said.

Juan & Maria’s will there for the Final Food Truck Rodeo of the season on Wednesday, which runs from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Rochester Public Market.