This is part two. If you guys haven't watched part one, make sure you do that first. The link is in the description below or just click the thumbnail right here.
What's the most important thing that you have done to grow your business? What's one thing you would suggest to our viewers who are looking to start a food truck? What's one or two things that they have to consider?
I actually held on to my construction job for probably like about two years. It's a pretty good idea sometimes, folks, to hold on to your for sure while you sort things out in the beginning. How did your opening day look like?
Did it go according to plan? I mean, did you have a plan for day one? And how did that go?
We had a plan. I had a, I remember I bought a little Weber toaster, like, you know, it's like a home barbecue deal to toast the bread. And, I mean, we did, like, I think 30 orders, which, you know, it was kind of a lot. It was kind of a lot for the fact that we had never really, you know, worked the cart before. I mean, for that little Weber thing, it was overwhelming.
I could only fit two breads on it. Yeah, so 30 seems like a large number. Yeah, and then after that, like, right the next day, I had to figure out what, you know, what to get.
And expect the unexpected always, you know. And then you just got to figure out. how to implement the right gear so you can get the job done.
What about the restaurant? How does that opening day look like? Opening day, we were packed.
It was so crazy. We had to line out the door, and we were just, you know, we were trying to figure everything out. We were trying to do our service. A little chaotic? Very chaotic.
We were trying to do our service, you know, and we branded it as a soft opening so people knew, because we knew it was going to take us some time to get, you know, accustomed. You know, it's the first restaurant as well, so, you know, it's not like having a food truck anymore. It was very chaotic and then we made some changes and we just kept on calibrating it to get it up to where it is now.
How did you choose the location of the restaurant? How important is it for you and for the industry, you think? I think, well, you know, I always said one day the location will choose me and I won't have to, you know, and that's kind of what happened.
The place we're going to with the food truck today, the owner there used to own it. this place for a barbecue shop. Okay. And he reached out, when he wanted to get out of it, he reached out to a bunch of the food trucks that were going there that were popular.
I was one of them. I jumped on it. You know, when I came back here and I'm like, wow, I got the opportunity to come back to the place where I actually bought my first car.
cart it was just like boom you know it wasn't like it's meant to be but like you didn't think much about the location of where it is do you feel like well i guess you could be doing better if you were in different location or is this is this a superb location this is this is perfect for especially the time that we're living in right now i see everybody's staying at home this is a neighborhood where everybody you know people live here they don't necessarily work so they just walk over to the restaurant exactly and especially with everything that's happened now you know everybody's at home People want to go out for walks. It's really helped us out quite a bit. The other thing is it's a corner where it's very busy, you know, like you have all these cars going by. Non-stop traffic. That's also why this patio here, more than anything, was a marketing move.
Why? Because there's probably like 10,000 cars that go by over here. Before I had that, nobody knew I had a patio. Interesting.
But now that I have that, I don't even have to say anything. And you're going to drive by, you'll know I have a patio. Right.
Besides those avenues of exposure, have you done anything else to get Don Lucho's name out there? Well, I think the fact of having food trucks really helps. You know, it's like it's a move in advertisement. It's a move in marketing equipment. You know, like you're moving around the city every day.
When you're just sitting at a red light, you're marketing, you know, without even realizing it sometimes. So driving down the freeway, you know, go buy tons of cars like they're, you know, they see a lot of times people honk at me. Hey, I don't even know who it is. Recently, now we're more organized, you know, reaching out to different food bloggers, you know, invite them over to try, you know, different dishes that we want to showcase. You know, that always helps.
And that's usually also like free advertisement. You know, they're happy to have somewhere to come. So I think people, I encourage people to actually look for those opportunities where. You can actually maximize your exposure without having to dig into your pocket. Very important.
Right. You know, that's a, that's a huge one because a lot of people think, how can I, you know, you have to spend money on advertisement, but what you're talking about is there's a lot of free advertisement avenues. You just got to reach out.
There's a lot of free advertisement avenues. It's just a matter of you recognizing them and going after them. Cause it, I mean, they'll come to you, but you're going to be more successful if you actually like go after it.
Right. Carlo, tell us what your best sellers are on this amazing menu. I mean, it looks great, lots of choices. What would you say the top three sellers are and why? Uh, the Lomo Saltado, probably because it's steak.
Everybody loves steak. What do we got in there? Steak mix, red onions, fire, tomatoes, garnish with cilantro. Everything's flamed.
And I would say the arroz con mariscos is one of our top sellers. That's your seafood. The seafood rice.
Very popular. And then it's either between arroz con mariscos or ceviche. The Peruvian cuisine is very, very well known for ceviche.
Some of the sandwiches are usually going to be like right behind those, those three there. Those are the four, right? Those four, I'm sorry. I was meaning the three top sellers over here will probably get a sandwich after that. And it will be between the steak and the chicharrón, which is fried pork.
And that's one of our best sellers on the truck. Sounds delicious. Did you make this menu yourself or how did that evolve?
Yeah, well, I... I knew what I wanted to serve, and particularly for the restaurant, I worked with a chef because I didn't have time to be indoors. So my executive chef, who's also a good friend of mine, he standardized the menu for me. So if I'm not around or he's not around and we have somebody else in the kitchen, people can just look at a recipe book and take care of it. You know, I know how to cook.
Obviously he knows how to cook, but the idea is one day for us to maybe not have to be in there. Right. You know, and somebody else be able to do the recipes.
How many people do you serve in the restaurant per day and then how many do you with the food trucks? Any estimates? Something like today, summertime, anywhere from 80 to 100 covers. Okay. Just from the food truck?
Just from the food truck. I usually, for that amount, I'll just have two people there that know what they're doing. They should be able to serve a crowd like that. At the restaurant, now with all this outdoor seating that we have, which is pretty new. This was new in June and then this is new from like about three weeks ago.
Okay. The expansion. But we can sit 30 people out there and we can sit about 40 people over here.
So when we're full, which we do get full Thursday evenings, Friday almost all day, Saturday almost all day, Sunday almost all day. Those are the big days. But, you know, we can serve 70 people, you know, sitting down.
Maxed out at about 70. Maxed out. Everything's spaced out at six feet apart. You know, we can still do 70 people. I mean, if it wasn't for, you know, having to be spaced out six feet, we could do a lot more.
What's the most important thing that you have done to grow your business? You know, first thing is you want to make sure you have a solid team. Because without a solid team, you can't really grow. Can't do it alone. You can't do it alone.
You have to have a solid team. You have to have people you can trust. trust in, people that have the same type of work ethic you have. You know, so I think building a good foundation with a team is very key for you to want to do any type of expansion, you know.
The marketing aspect is also, some people, you know, don't really want to spend the money sometimes. They think, well, you know, I don't know if I'm going to see this right away. I'm going to see it back right away.
Like, you know, definitely, you know, spend money in advertising your product because that's really what's going to get you. you know out there. Not necessarily spending money right? Well not necessarily spending money.
Just free advertising. Exactly. Free advertising. Look for the ways that you can actually you know get your brand out there.
Participate in events you know in the community and whatnot. But yeah there's many ways to do it without having to spend money. And when you do spend it, spend it wisely. Yeah so show us a little bit around.
What do we got here? Yeah sure. So this would be the sandwich prep station. Pretty much we have a food warmer here. This opens up, it will have like all our, you know, condiments, well, salad, tomatoes and whatnot.
You roll the sandwich and when we're super busy, we go out through this window, it'll be our service window over here. We have somebody taking orders here. We have a grill slash fryer guy over here. So like three people can do probably easily do anywhere from 90 to 140 orders in a shift.
And see, we have this workflow already organized, right? So. Order comes in, boom, food comes out from there. Yeah, moves this way.
Moves over here. Stuff gets assembled here, and then it goes out the window. So very important to have a good assembly line, you know, to help the whole thing flow. Yeah. Efficiency.
Efficiency, exactly. Yeah. So you've gotten a lot of attention and sort of accolades on both local and national level in magazines.
Have you sought out those opportunities and that exposure or how did that happen? Well, the one big one that I had was when I was still a food cart and it was a Peruvian chef, the one that made Peruvian food most popular, Gaston Acurio. So I sent him a direct message. I was like, hey, you know, I'm a Peruvian living in Seattle and I'm trying to do, I'm doing a food cart with Peruvian sandwiches. If you could give me a shout out on your platform, it would be...
Great. Waited next morning. It was like, hey, congratulations, Carlo.
Good luck to you. I hope you wish you the best. Nice.
Representing our culture and our food. And boom, there I was on a platform of a million and a half people around the world that follow him. And that definitely brought a lot of attention, business, my way, exposure.
Yeah, it felt great. Like my family was like. calling me that day like hey you know good job you're on the right path it was awesome it was awesome i didn't know what was gonna happen i was like god maybe nobody will see it what was the risk of doing it that's the amazing part i think that i hope the listeners see that that sometimes we gotta take these risks exactly and the best advertisement is definitely gonna be free advertisement you know if you don't have to pay for it and you're getting some sort of exposure any type of exposure you know it's good like you should definitely take the time out to do it Did you work off of a business plan and did a ghost plan?
Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. I definitely pretty much did a timeline kind of where I saw myself as I progressed into the whole food cart. I actually held on to my construction job for probably like about two years while I try to sort everything out and figure out this whole new industry that I'm jumping into, you know.
So it's a pretty good idea sometimes, folks, to hold on to your, you know, your for sure. while you sort things out in the beginning. After a while, though, it's very important to take that dive. If you don't, you know, you can't just half do something, you know, you halfway do something.
You want to go, you're only going to realize your full talent and your full potential if you actually give yourself 100% to whatever it is you want to do. It's like jumping off a cliff and being like, I don't know what happens, but... The parachute's going to open, you know, hopefully.
Yeah, that's kind of what business is like, right? I mean, came out with that cart. I didn't know what, you know, I was going to be sitting at a restaurant.
And the cool thing about it, too, is I tell you, I do it full circle here. Because I bought that first cart in this very lot seven years ago from the people that owned this place, this restaurant. Well, not the building, the restaurant. And I bought this trailer from them as well.
And then seven years, or, you know. a year ago almost now, I come back and I actually take the restaurant. Didn't mean to do it. It just happened that way. Just pure coincidence.
What's one thing you would suggest to our viewers who are looking to start a food truck? What's one or two things that they have to consider, be faithful to, etc.? Well, yeah, being reliable is number one.
It's repetitive. Once you get a good location, like for instance in Seattle, the breweries are a great place to go sell your food. So you have a relationship with the owners as well.
So you don't want to not be showing up or just showing up late because eventually that's going to turn into one of your places that you're going to be doing good sales. So it's all about cultivating a relationship with them and making sure that, you know. You're showing up in time and getting the job done. Yep. Do what you said you're going to do when you said you're going to do it.
Yeah, exactly. Simple. Again, you guys, everything that we hear is disagree or agree.
I think everything's really simple. And we just got to execute on that and be faithful to it. So this is great. I love it. I hope you guys really enjoyed this two-part series of Don Lucha's restaurant, the food truck, the food trailer, and really Carlos'story of starting and growing his business.
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