At the beginning of 2019, Nayomie Mendoza was on the cusp of turning 21 and heading into her senior year at Biola University, where she majored in business management. For Mendoza, the degree was more of an asset to bolster the earned experience she’d gained making runs to the Restaurant Depot with her mom and sister throughout her childhood, then interning as an accountant at 16 at her family’s restaurant, Cuernavaca’s Grill, in Los Angeles.
Her father had been running the Mexican eatery for 14 years when it was time to pass the torch, and Mendoza was the ideal candidate. She had settled into the role and was successfully running the joint when the pandemic hit. A shadow of uncertainty crept over the family restaurant, a reality that many small businesses were grappling with at the time.
“We were about to lose our family restaurant, and since I was a new owner, I didn’t qualify for federal aid because the minimum requirement was two years of ownership,” Mendoza said in a phone interview. “We even had the conversation as a family where everyone would just walk away and go into their own career paths.”
Mendoza tapped into her creativity, which was always the facet in which she felt she thrived best in business, despite her experience in accounting. She began recording videos of their favorite dishes for social media in hopes that online views would translate into more foot traffic.
Among those videos was a behind-the-scenes short of the restaurant’s chile relleno, a battered poblano pepper stuffed with cheese and a choice of meat. It seemed like just another video showcasing the restaurant’s staples, but it turned out to be their golden ticket.
“We woke up to over 10.5 million views on our chile relleno video, and then a few days went by, and the Food Network spotlighted the dish, which definitely catapulted us,” Mendoza said. “We had always been known to the community, but now we were gaining a large social media following.”
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After the dish went viral, the restaurant filled orders from locals and other travelers looking to taste the now-famous chile relleno. In six months, sales increased exponentially, allowing the eatery to expand next door after their neighbors moved out of the shopping complex. Their scrappy 300-square-foot location grew to 7,000 square feet, adding more dining and kitchen spaces. The expansion didn’t stop there. Last year, they opened a second location in the city of Bell.
While going viral might quickly turn the tide for some, it can be unpredictable. Other marketing strategies are also helping businesses increase their notoriety: Enter organizations such as Latin Restaurant Weeks, the sister organization of Black Restaurant Week, which wrapped Sept. 1.
Similarly to its predecessor, Latin Restaurant Weeks will showcase Latin American cuisine in Los Angeles from Sept. 13 through Sept. 27, marking the organization’s first year in the city. The two-week initiative will highlight foods from Central America, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and regions of Mexico. Coffee shops, bakeries, and other fast casual and fine-dining establishments will offer discounts and promotions.
Latin Restaurant Weeks was co-founded by Karinn Chavarria and Warren Luckett, founder of Black Restaurant Week, in 2019. Chavarria teamed up with Luckett after receiving feedback from the Latino community in her hometown of Houston, which wanted to bring awareness to the contributions of their labor in front and back of the house.
After their success in Houston, they decided to take their organization to other cities around the country, including Miami, Chicago, New York City, Atlanta, and now Los Angeles, which they felt had large pockets of Latino communities that showcased the flavors of the Latin American diaspora.
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“Expanding to Los Angeles was a natural step for Latin Restaurant Weeks given the city’s cultural residence and its role as a major influencer,” Chavarria said. “L.A. is one of the largest and most diverse Latin communities in the U.S. with cultural influences from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, and what we wanted to do here is showcase and celebrate the diversity of the Latin cuisine traditions. We feel that L.A. truly embraces multiculturalism. When you think about the top five food cities, L.A. is there with a strong reputation for innovation and authenticity.”
In her travels around the country with Latin Restaurant Weeks, Chavarria said she’s heard the concerns of business owners that have impacted dining establishments across the industry. Some of these trends include rising labor costs, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and hiring and retaining staff. In response, she said some businesses have had to increase menu prices, rely on part-time workers or devise other ways to circumvent their costs so that their customers keep coming back and they can stay competitive.
“Restaurants have had to make substitutions or change their offerings when certain ingredients become unavailable,” she said. “The good thing is a lot of restaurants are building relationships with local suppliers, and many folks have also told me that they’re adopting seasonal menus or sourcing more affordable ingredients to keep the cost manageable.”
Chavarria also cites the difficulty of securing business loans for Latino business owners. However, she said that’s where year-round initiatives such as the Feed The Soul Foundation‘s Restaurant Business Development program can help establishments financially.
The program provides grants and consultants to help restaurants improve their human resources, hiring practices and operational procedures. Other programs include the National Emergency Relief Fund, which helps establishments that have been broken into or damaged by a natural disaster.
For Francisco Reyes, owner of La Cocina De Los Reyes in La Puente, access to funds is a bit difficult. The dilemma of constantly rising costs influenced him to work with Latin Restaurant Weeks, which provides financial support.
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Reyes was introduced to the hospitality industry by working minimum wage jobs in kitchens specializing in Mexican food from Michoacán, Jalisco, Tijuana, and Zacatecas. He noticed no Chiapanecan food from Chiapas, Mexico, where he and his family immigrated from in 1999. The region is one of the poorest in Mexico and has a high Indigenous population, which Guatemalan and Salvadorian migrants often pass through on their way to the U.S.
After gaining experience in the kitchen, he decided to open La Cocina de los Reyes in September 2022, which strictly serves Chiapanecan food. He wanted people to experience the staples of his hometown, such as the tamal de chipilín with salsa verde, mole con pollo, and salsa Rojo.
Reyes said in a phone interview that, along with high rent and electricity bills, one of the biggest challenges has been people’s hesitancy to try the food because it looks different from the other more overrepresented styles of Mexican food in Los Angeles. Some differences include their use of black beans instead of pinto beans and sides of fried plantains, which are more associated with Central American cuisine.
“Because people don’t know our food, they think a certain way about it, sometimes saying it looks nasty,” Reyes said. “It’s an education process, but their doubts are put to rest when they try it.”
He found that educating people on his menu through marketing has been an effective way to get people more interested in Chiapanecan food, and finding the right way to market it has been a learning process. So, getting help from organizations such as Latin Restaurant Weeks is something he won’t take for granted.
“Right now, we’re in a moment in time where social media drives everything,” Reyes said. “What this program does is very important to promote our business not just in our city or state, but it also gives the chance to be recognized nationally.”
For more information on Latin Restaurant Weeks, visit latinrestaurantweeks.com.
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