San Jose’s Most Creative Paleta Cart Is Leveling Up the Mexican Ice Pop

On a hot summer day, the sound of a paleta cart’s bells usually signals the arrival of bright red paletas de fresa, ice cream sandwiches and gumball-eyed Spider-Man popsicles.

But the ice pops inside Paleta Planeta’s galaxy-wrapped cart in San Jose are different. While the cart does sell some traditional Mexican fruit paletas, it also offers an ever-rotating selection of hybrid flavors like taro Oreo and avocado chocolate. Other flavors aren’t particularly Mexican, or what you’d think to put in a popsicle, at all — pumpkin pie, for instance.

The experimental approach has earned Paleta Planeta a cult following across the South Bay.

“Our paletas have traditional Mexican roots,” co-founder Mauricio Salazar says. “But we blend them with flavors from other cultures.”

Mauricio and his brother Luis Salazar started selling paletas from their parents’ garage in October 2021. They wanted to start their own business due to the uncertainty of the pandemic’s layoffs, and their cousins — third-generation paleteros in Texas — offered to teach them the basics. Now, the Salazars manufacture and sell their ice pops from a kitchen in the back of Zuñigas Restaurant in San Jose. While recipe development is a joint effort, Luis is the one who makes the paletas. Mauricio primarily handles events and social media. And Gabriel, their younger brother, helps with bookkeeping and invoicing.

“We grew up playing competitive soccer,” Mauricio says. “We understand the importance of having a team.”

As a team of two, Mauricio and Luis are able to produce and package a few hundred paletas per day with the use of a flash freezer. They fill metal paleta molds with fresh fruit purées and dunk them into a water-glycol bath, which freezes a batch within minutes. This is faster than waiting for paletas to solidify in a traditional freezer, and more importantly, it produces paletas that are light and airy.

The brothers take their craft seriously and have even traveled to the international paleta convention in Mexico City to learn the flavors and techniques being used by new-wave paleteros. Indeed, what sets Planeta Paletas apart is the brothers’ creativity and dedication to offering unique flavor combinations.

“Sometimes I go to the bar for inspiration,” says Luis. “If flavors work in a drink, they work in a paleta.” (A mojito inspired him to pair mint with fruit flavors like strawberry, pineapple and mango.) Mauricio keeps an eye out for potential ideas by keeping track of what fruits are in season and perusing boba shop menus.