ABSTRACT
The grocers organized businesses at risk for profit; that is, they were entrepreneurs. Some grocers were affluent enough to have moved up to more prestigious endeavors. Essential to an estimation of the grocers as entrepreneurs is the question of business longevity. In 1794 the merchant tribunal of Mexico City observed to the viceroy that among the owners of grocery and wine stores were few who stayed in business for many months. During the early nineteenth century only a small percentage of the grocers of Mexico City remained in business over a long period of time. By the late colonial period an increasingly common form of mixed enterprise in Mexico City was the ownership of wine stores by grocers. By branching out into the wine store business the grocers could legally sell wine and spirits, just as small retail grocers normally did in many other parts of Spanish America.
