Ralph Rubio of Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill has set up his fish taco headquarters in Carlsbad.

Latinos own roughly 34,000 businesses in San Diego County, with many clustered in the South Bay. Many, but not all. Thousands go the other direction, operating in the North County. In fact, one of the largest Hispanic-owned businesses in the country has its headquarters in Oceanside.

OneSource Distributors, a supplier of electrical materials for construction, automation and the industrial marketplace, ranked 45th on Hispanic Business magazine’s list of 500 highest grossing Hispanic-owned companies.

Owned by Robert Zamarripa, the company was founded in 1983 in San Diego and gained an edge by offering technical support and some assembly services along with its electrical products. OneSource Distributors grosses $130 million annually, but that figure is expected to grow. “We just actually received a huge contract with San Diego Gas & Electric,” says Carol Ulak, the company’s marketing manager. “That will bump up the business tremendously.”

A year ago, OneSource Distributors moved its corporate headquarters from Mira Mesa to a 100,000-square-foot building in an Oceanside industrial park. With OneSource Distributors operating 10 locations stretching from El Centro to San Diego and Tijuana and north to Orange County, Ulak says Oceanside made sense as a place for central headquarters.

OneSource Distributors is hardly the only Hispanic business heading north. Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill has moved its headquarters from San Diego to Carlsbad. The restaurant chain, famous for its fish tacos, was founded 21 years ago by Ralph Rubio and his father, Ray. The company, now publicly traded, operates, licenses or franchises about 150 restaurants in California, Arizona, Oregon, Colorado, Utah and Nevada. Rubio, the chairman and CEO, still holds 20 percent ownership.

Other enterprises are flourishing in the North County. Robert Villarreal, a past president and chief executive of the San Diego County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, cites a 1997 economic study by the U.S. Census Bureau. It counted 800 Hispanic-owned businesses in Oceanside, 884 in Escondido, 853 in Encinitas and 527 in Vista. “There is a very strong entrepreneurial streak in the Hispanic community, and that is reflected in the numbers,” says Villarreal, who is the San Diego County market development manager for Bank of America.

But most Hispanic-owned businesses are small, with fewer than five employees, Villarreal says. The challenge, he adds, is to provide them with the technical assistance and capital so that they have the opportunity to grow — no matter which end of the county they call home.

— Lynne Carrier