‘We’d rather be ahead of the curve’: How Albuquerque’s small businesses are putting AI to work

Two years ago, Old Barrel Tea Co. owner Paola Huffmon was adamant she would never use artificial intelligence.

Now, she’s an AI whiz, using it to expand her tea manufacturing, retailing and wholesaling business one prompt at a time.

“It's been so helpful for me,” Huffmon said. “I used to be that person that was like, ‘I'm not going to use AI. I don't want to be fake.’ But I think there's smart ways to use it.”

AI is a technology that allows computers and machines to perform complex tasks that normally require human intelligence. Use of AI across businesses nationwide has steadily climbed since 2023, according to the Census Bureau’s Business Trends and Outlook Survey, which updates every two weeks.

AI use across U.S. businesses jumped more than 10% from December 2024 through the end of 2025, with a little more than 5% of that spike taking place between October and December, recent data shows.

“AI’s been heavy this year,” said Gibran Jones, a Meta certified lead trainer who led an Albuquerque workshop on AI for businesses in early December. “I would say (since) July, a lot of my engagements have been AI focused.”

The workshops are offered nationwide, but primarily in communities with or near data centers. With a Meta data center campus in Los Lunas, Jones came to Albuquerque to talk to businesses about how to use AI wisely and craft efficient prompts that help AI deliver desired results.

“AI is a tool — it’s not the end-all be-all,” Jones said. “But you need to be able to be familiar with it.”

In New Mexico, more than 20% of businesses utilized AI in December, according to Census Bureau data. That includes having AI assist with project management, accounting, research and the hiring process.

Laurene Rodriguez, CEO of local agency Mariposa Marketing, said she believes businesses’ willingness to use AI will be imperative in the coming months and years, though she said many Albuquerque businesses are still in the early stages of exploring how to effectively use the technology.

“I think a lot of people are still using it for very basic functionality, like learning ChatGPT. I don’t think people have really dug deep into it yet,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve done a couple talks on AI locally, and I think people are still trying to wrap their brains around it.”

Mariposa’s 20-plus local clients — including regional coffee companies, restaurants and schools — have presented a mixed bag of leaders wary and optimistic of the emerging technology. Rodriguez said she’s seen businesses use AI for everything from financial analysis to creating proposals and crafting job descriptions.

Huffmon’s initial hesitation to use AI softened when she and some of her staff attended a six-week course about AI prompting through Central New Mexico Community College.

“I think (AI is) going to happen whether we like it or not,” Huffmon said, “so it’s better to learn it now and be at the front of it than to wait until it’s so ahead of you that you can’t even understand it and you’re behind.”

The course focused on AI prompting — giving an AI model, like a chatbot, a prompt with clear instructions, questions or commands to receive a desired response or outcome.

One of Huffmon’s takeaways from the course was the importance of fact-checking AI and crafting prompts clearly to extract factual information from it because of AI’s tendency to hallucinate.

A hallucination is a plausible but false statement generated by AI, according to OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. AI providing an incorrect birthday or title for a person is an example. The company says this is the result of building the language model to guess rather than admit uncertainty.

Since taking the CNM course, Huffmon has used AI to choose a training program suitable for her business and budget, fill out grant applications, determine pricing amid tariff wars over the past year, add a particular tone to presentations, analyze a pitch from a variety of perspectives and create a curated list of cities her business could target for future expansion.

“It’s like having a consultant,” Huffmon said. “It’s just consulting, but it’s not the answer. I’m still going to check and use my mind and my ideas to check what it gave me and make the final decision.”

Jones echoed Huffmon’s view of AI as a consultant, saying he believes the growing accessibility of the technology could level the playing field between smaller businesses and companies with more resources and a bigger budget to hire consultants and assistants.

But at the end of the day, Jones said, business owners are the experts on their business, not AI.

“If it doesn’t feel right, doesn’t sound right — don’t do it,” Jones said.

There are limits to Huffmon’s AI use. She’s drawn the line at using AI to respond to emails.

“I think it’s important to sound like a human,” Huffmon said. “I like whenever I read an email and there’s maybe a misspelled word or the grammar isn’t perfect because I know a person is behind it.”

Maintaining human connection amid AI exploration has also been a priority for Charles Baca, owner of Burning Daylight Coffee Co.

“Our whole business model is making sure that the person behind the counter is speaking to another person on the other side of that counter,” Baca said.

Baca has implemented AI into his coffee shop in one minimal but fun way: He included a menu option called “Ask AI,” which encourages customers to ask AI which drink they should get. It could be any drink, even one not on the menu, as long as the shop has the ingredients.

The business just moved to a new location, putting the AI menu option on pause, but Baca said he plans to reintroduce the idea this year.

The AI menu option is about as far as Baca plans to incorporate the technology into the shop’s customer-facing operations. Any further AI exploration will likely be behind the scenes and involve streamlining backend operations, he said.

“As it evolves, we have to proceed with caution but we have to utilize it because that’s the direction the world is going in,” Baca said. “We’d rather be ahead of the curve than behind it, and move forward with it while still educating ourselves.”

Education will be key to navigating AI moving forward, Jones said. His suggestion: Play with it.

“There’s a lot of people who are just so unsure of it,” Jones said. “If we’re going to break that barrier down, we have to just get to playing with it. When we were kids, everything was a toy. Just play with it.”

For Huffmon, exploring AI has been a surprisingly enjoyable process — but it’s also amplified what she loves about humanity.

“The best art pieces are the ones that have the crooked face. I love to buy antiques and rustic furniture because it looks used and looks like it has a story,” Huffmon said. “So I think we can use AI to help us — but it should never replace us, because we’re much cooler than AI.”

Kylie Garcia covers retail and real estate for the Journal. You can reach her at kgarcia@abqjournal.com.