Let's Taco 'Bout Branding

Kristen Corral, Co-Founder of Tacotarian and Good Morning Kitchen, joins host Megan Comfort to share her unique journey from Las Vegas performer to successful restaurateur. Kristen reveals her secrets to success, emphasizing the importance of community engagement, impactful marketing, and maintaining an authentic brand. She also discusses business expansion, franchising plans, and a humorous anecdote she calls "Watergate." For more information, visit eattacotarian.com.

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Transcript

(...) Hello and welcome to Through the Door, the insider's perspective on running a business. I'm Megan Comfort, Small Business Manager at Nevada State Bank. This is a podcast where we get to interview Nevada-based business owners and learn from them and get their experiences and stories about running a company in Nevada. With that, I have my next guest with me, Kristen Corral. She is the co-founder of Taco-Tarian.(...) It is an amazing and very unique vegan taco spot that's throughout actually Las Vegas with a new one opening up inside, is it Planet Hollywood? Planet Hollywood on the strip.(...) Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. We typically will start these off by just getting a little bit of a background story on how you arrived in Las Vegas and really how you ended up coming into being a co-founder of Taco-Tarian. Yeah, I don't have the typical journey. I have a very roundabout way of getting here, but I'll give you kind of a high-level overview. I grew up as a performer. I did ballet, jazz, tap. When I turned 18, I left home to work on cruise ships. I did that for a while. I did a tour in Europe. Then I moved to LA to pursue commercial work and that kind of performance didn't go as planned.

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I had a friend who lived here in Vegas who was in Siegfried and Roy.(...) I came out here and auditioned. That was obviously a very long time ago, not to age myself.

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I didn't make it, but I made it to the top three out of, I think, 300 people showed up back then. This was the heyday of day of shows.(...) Even now, that's an iconic show. Right, exactly.

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I was like, "Okay, this is way more my speed. There's a lot of work here." I just kind of packed up my stuff in LA. I knew one person here and she lived way out in Henderson. I just rented this apartment site Unseen. It was on MLK Boulevard.

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It was just the most random thing. I just moved here. I got a job at Mona Mi Gabbi.

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I just started auditioning and eventually performing. I did that for 10 years.(...) I met my husband at Mona Mi who's also now a partner of mine.

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I just started performing. I ended up in different magician shows. I was a magician's assistant for a long time. I did all kinds of showgirl shows. The show that I ended my career with was Peep Show, which was Jerry Mitchell,(...) a Broadway director. Where was that at? That was ironically at Planet Hollywood. Oh my God. It comes full circle. It comes full circle. Yeah, it comes full circle. I did that. Then when I was getting ready to retire from performing, I was like, "What am I going to do? I don't really..." You're still very young. Yeah, I was 30. I just didn't know what to do. I'm not good at working for other people.

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Most business owners are not. They're the unemployable. I didn't really have much school. I didn't go to college.

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I was like, "I really love animals. That's the only thing I really cared about. What can I do with that?" Actually, there was a program at UNLV for animal massage and just random pet care. I did that and I started my own pet care company.

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That was in 2011.

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Did you have a brick and mortar? No. That was the beauty of it. There was actually a program called Career Transitions for Dancers,(...) which is a grant-style program that almost everybody that applies gets it. It's exactly for this, for performers who want to transition out of performing. They give you a grant to either put towards education or starting a business. I put that towards starting my business. I basically started that business with $2,500.

(...)

I just started approaching all the performers I knew, everybody in my community and was like, "Hey, I'm offering pet sitting now and everybody has animals and everybody wants to travel." They want to go to with someone they trust. Exactly.(...) Exactly. From there, I was able to scale it so that it was just comfortable for me and I was making a great living. Then in 2017, I was like, "What am I doing? Am I just going to be a solopreneur forever?"

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I got in this mastermind group for pet sitting companies that had 10 or more employees, even though I had no employees. I just joined and I just started to learn everything. There was so much skill-based learning for marketing and customer service, tech. How did you find a group? That's very unique. You were like, "I love the title." You used solopreneur. Then you're like, "I need to be around more people that are doing it at a bigger scale so I can learn more things." Exactly. I don't know if I just ... I think it maybe just came up in my Facebook feed or something. I was following other pet sitting groups and I saw it mentioned somewhere on Facebook. I joined this group and it was coached by this woman named Bella Vasta. She had sold her pet care business. From there, I just focused solely on scaling, growing.

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That's what I did for the next few years and I scaled it. Eventually I sold it in 2022 after we had opened. We opened Tuckatarian, our first one in 2018. No, I know. Was your first location the one downtown or the one off of Fort Apache? No, the one on Fort Apache and Patrick. Okay, yeah. I've been to that one because it's closer. Yeah. By the time I sold my pet sitting company,(...) I think we had three locations or maybe four. It was really hard to juggle and I just got to the point where even though I loved it so much and I had it for more than 10 years, but I had a really great manager that was managing the day-to-day for me and she was able to buy me out and keep the business. That's amazing. I actually use her now as my pet center, which is great. I love that you had an employee that worked for you that had the opportunity to buy. Those stories are my favorite because those are the ones that really understand the business, put their blood, sweat, and tears into it too, especially the employees that when you find employees that treat it like their own, those are my favorite people. It wasn't in the beginning going to work out like that. I advertise it for sale and I had met with a couple. They had signed a purchase agreement and then when they got into it, it looked like it was going to be way more work than they initially had thought. I think they thought they could just buy this business and just put nothing into it.(...) Then I cut it with them. I was like, "Listen, I can't sell it to you if you're not going to put any effort into it." It didn't be around. Yeah. Then Desiree stepped in. She's like, "I think maybe I could swing this." I was like, "Thank gosh. Take it girl. I want you to take it." I was so happy. Tell me the transition with Taco Terrian then. How did that brainchild come into being? It's very random. Like I said, I hadn't worked in restaurants a lot, but my background is not in restaurants. I worked in it probably every one. My first job was at Longhorn Steakhouse in Orlando, Florida. I had working knowledge, but my husband has been in the restaurant industry for 20-something years.

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We met at Mona Me. He was like the bus ... No, he was like a bar back at the time. Then he worked his way up. Then he went and worked with Firefly for years and years and years. He was like an operations manager at one point.

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They were actually doing a work trip. I was the only spouse that wasn't on this management group team.

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They just invited me along because they felt like, "Oh, he's going to feel awkward if his spouse isn't there and everyone else's spouse is part of the employee."

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I was like, "Should I go? I don't know. It's going to be awkward. I don't know everybody." I went and two of his other coworkers, which are Dan and Regina, Dan was managing all the finances for that restaurant group and Regina was doing banquets and coordination.

(...)

They had worked together for 15 years. On this trip, we just got to talking. Regina's from Mexico City, so she was showing us how much great food there is there and how much vegetarian and vegan food there was there. Mexico City is a foodie spot. It's amazing. It's a mecca for food. It's incredible.(...) If you haven't been, you should definitely go.

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We just all got to talking and everyone, of course, has this aspiration of owning their own business, but specifically owning their own restaurant. I was already vegan at the time, so I really wanted to do something in that space.

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Animals are something that I'm incredibly passionate about. When they were talking, I was like, "What if we didn't vegan? It would be really cool." There's a gap in the market for something that's really, really good and really inviting and not hippy feeling. Yeah, fun for all people, not just vegans too, which is really nice.

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That's where it was born. I think that was February of 2018.

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By April, we had a signed lease and we were open by August. Wow. We moved like the wind. We moved fast.

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What was the decision with starting with your first location in the Southwest? Was it more of the lease, was just very favorable and it made sense? Honestly,(...) I know this is probably a bad answer, but we go where opportunity suits us. We've never really put a lot of research into how many people live in this area or how many people above this income. I think that's something we will have to start doing as we grow, but that was a turnkey space. It already had kitchen. It had kitchen equipment that was left in there. It had already been a working restaurant, so it had a grease trap and all of these things. All of that is highly expensive if you're getting into a space that doesn't have any of that. You can really invest for a startup concept, so much money on something that you don't necessarily know if people are going to take to it. Exactly. We're very conservative financially. We always have been. We did almost all of the work that we could ourselves. We were there demoing. We were there painting. We were there tiling.

(...)

Regina's dad was there doing stuff. My mom's boyfriend, Rick, is a carpenter, so he was helping us with the countertops. We were re-piecing furniture together. We very much put blood, sweat, and tears into that project, but it allowed us to start profitable off the bat. Yes, which is so important. I love that you say that you're financially conservative and that you really put a lot of work into it, because I think that that's something a lot of business owners sometimes don't always believe that they can do, or that they're just concerned.(...) There's this mindset that it's always location, location, location. You've always heard that over decades of any restaurant or retail space. It's all about your location. I'm not saying that that's not true, but I do think that with social media and marketing and different things that you can do nowadays, sometimes it's not always about the visibility of your location being in a place that's going to have high rent and you're going to have to make a lot of investments. I 100% agree. I think a lot of people have ... There's a few mistakes that I see that other people make, and trust me, we make mistakes too. Don't get me wrong, but I think a lot of, specifically in restaurants, people have this if you build it, they will come mentality like, "Oh, just open your doors and sell good food and people will show up." Some people get very lucky and that is the case. Most people are not that fortunate.(...) Yeah, location is important, and of course food is very important, but there's so many other factors that go into owning a business and owning a restaurant that play a part in how successful you are, so agreed. After you started your first location, how long did it take you guys to realize that you wanted to start expanding?

(...)

We always had in the back of our heads that we wanted to create something that was replicable, something that was not necessarily franchisable because franchising is something that we've recently come around to, but something that could be rinse and repeat. Yeah, consistent repeatable process that is very simple and more turnkey, it makes it cheaper and it's proven concept, which is great. Exactly. We always had that in mind, but I think I am very much ... I hate to use the word manifest because I'm so not this hippie sort of manifest everything. I do believe in self-fulfilling prophecy.

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I believe in putting things out into the universe. When we opened, I was like, "We are going to sell a million dollars in our first year. We're going to do it. We can do this." Of course, that's not typically what happens, but we worked our butts off.

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We did really, really well and we were able to be like, "Okay, this is going to work. Now we can." What would you contribute that to? Would you say that it was a lot of the focus that you had on marketing or did you guys do events or how did you create awareness to like, "Hey, Tacotarian exists and it's here and you really need to check it out regardless if you're vegan or not. You're going to love the food." Yeah. I think there's not one specific thing I can point to, but I'll give you a few things that we do really, really well. Of course, our food is incredible.(...) Our marketing is not as niche down as other vegan restaurants are. Our marketing is, "Hey, we have really great Mexican food and oh, by the way, it just happens to me being with plants. We sell real Coke. Sorry, I love Coca-Cola. I cannot ... That is my biggest pet peeve is when restaurants that are vegan or vegetarian or healthy or whatever don't have real soda. It makes me nuts. People want a soda even if they're eating healthy. They justify it. They're like, "I'm eating healthier. I can have the soda." Right. Okay. That's my mentality.

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Then also we sell alcohol.

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Some of our stores overperform with alcohol than others, but we still have that available. We have margaritas if people want to come and have a night out. Especially with Mexican food. I feel like a margarita or a beer or something always has to be paired with and there's just something beautiful about having like, guacamole and chips with like a beer or margarita. Even just having that makes my day.

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In the county, most people don't know this, but if you're opening a restaurant in the county, there's actually a very specific liquor license where you can do beer, wine, and one specialty cocktail. You don't have to have a full liquor license. It's this very unique liquor license that they offer and it's much more affordable. We were able to take advantage of that as well. Wow. Yeah. That's one thing, of course. Marketing, we're very heavy on social media, but we're also heavy in the community. I think this is something that we do really, really, really well.(...) Early on, we started doing specials where we donate a portion of the proceeds to some of our favorite charities locally that align with our values and align with our brand.

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We give back. We create these viral specials. The Mexican pizza,(...) right now we have the Tortsa Haugata. We have all these amazing specials that people go crazy for and then they can only get them two months out of the year. They run down and they want this special multiple times during the month and then we can cross-promote with our charity partners.(...) Our charity partners are pushing to their community. We're pushing to our community. We're pushing people to charity and charities are pushing people to us. It's allowed us to reach a broader audience. I love the collaboration of that because it benefits two sides and it obviously widens the audience and the scope of your reach with communities and people that might have never, ever walked into your location. To be honest with you, the design of your locations are really awesome. They're just really fun and bright and beautiful. I heard about it because a friend of mine was like, "I'm taking this new taco spot." I'm like, "Okay, great." Then we go there and I'm like, "Whoa, this place is really cool."

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It was the one off of Flamingo, a small one. Then I found out that you had the one downtown.

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It was funny because when I walked in, I didn't realize that it was vegan.

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When we were looking at the menu, I was like, "Wait a minute." I'm like, "Oh, this is a vegan taco place." He's like, "Yeah, but you really got to try the Soy Riso taco."(...) We got guacamole and everything. It was funny for probably a month, we would go once a week over to that location. It was really fun. Unfortunately, we couldn't drink because we were working and we didn't.

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It was just a really fun environment and it was so cute and small and cozy and I loved that. Then when you opened up the one downtown, I was like, "Oh, cool." It's a completely different vibe. Yes, and it's bigger.

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I love all the little Chachkies and things that you also sell. They're so cute. Yeah, my business partner Regina, because she's from Mexico City, so every time she goes back, there's these art markets and all these vendors. They sell all this stuff, so she stocks up on all this stuff. It's actually stuff that's coming directly from people that hand make it and stuff in Mexico, so it's really unique.(...) Nice.(...) After opening up, was the second location the downtown one? Yes, the second was downtown and that was again,(...) we weren't really looking to be downtown, but our broker was like, "You guys should really consider looking at this area. It's very up and coming." At the time, there was really only Makers and Finders and Estors. There really wasn't much more there.(...) We took a gamble, but we got a really good deal.(...) We're in a nice corner space with all windows, so it's beautiful natural light.(...) We got lucky.(...) After that downtown location, how quickly did you end up looking at another spot?(...) We opened the downtown location in December, the very end of the year, December 2019.

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Then of course, COVID hit.

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We had to shut down all of the restaurants for I think we closed for six weeks and then we reopened with to go. During that six weeks, we evaluated our systems and processes.

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We worked to put together a commissary kitchen to make sure all of our food was consistent as we grow.(...) We put all these systems and processes. We put new training things in place and we really started using that time to evaluate what our plan was. At the time, the plan was still to keep continuing to grow corporate stores. During COVID, we were out looking at locations, trying to find something in Henderson, but at the time, everybody else was doing the same thing.(...) It was crazy. There was nothing available. That is really surprising only because that was such a weird time. It's funny because I think about some of the restaurants and things that they actually started selling their liquor, their backup liquor and toilet paper and just random things that they could do just because you didn't know when you were going to open and not every business was fortunate enough to have the ability to do to go. Some of the unique stories that I've heard during COVID honestly blow me away over the years, just the resilience and the ingenuity of thinking of how can I keep this thing afloat until obviously the reopen happens because it will be inevitable. Did you guys have that level of stress as well on yourselves as business owners, keeping your employees paid and not necessarily knowing when to reopen? Or was some of that subsided by having knowledge of when you were going to reopen?(...) In the beginning, I remember before we closed, when it was still before everything hit the fan, we were sitting at this Starbucks, the Starbucks that's by our Ford Apache location, talking through scenarios like, "Okay, if this happens, we'll do this. If this happens, we'll do this." If everything closes, worst case scenario, and we were all like, "It's never going to be worst case scenario," but of course it was quickly worst case scenario. That's crazy how it... To your point, it's never worst case scenario, but it happened to be that one time. It happened so fast. You guys really saw the writing on the wall before it actually happened and came together as a management team and was like, "We need to address different scenarios should that happen so that we're not running around with our head on fire." Yeah, which we did, but we still ran around with our head on fire. Oh yeah, but on different things. Yeah, exactly.

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We ended up closing. We did pivot. We sold meal kits at the time where people could build their own taco bar at home.

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The city and the county graciously allowed people to sell alcohol to go, so we applied for that additional license. We were able to sell margaritas to go, which was great for us. We did pivot and try to introduce a lot of things, and luckily Mexican food carries well. It does. I think takeout restaurants were blessed in that way as opposed to sit-down restaurants that were struggling to pivot.

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We were able to still sell to go and everything throughout. Remember, it was like tiered opening where you could sit like 10% and then 20%. They had to be a certain space apart and all of that stuff.

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You started looking for that third location during that time, which sounds like, surprisingly, it was actually kind of challenging to find a space. Sounds like other folks were doing that too.

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What spot did you enter? Then we ended up with our Henderson location, which was a former Starbucks.

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That's off Valley Verde in 215.(...) Again, that one already had a grease trap. It had some infrastructure, although we did have to do quite a bit there because Starbucks doesn't have a full kitchen or anything. We had to kind of move some walls around, move some plumbing, but it was relatively minor. We were open August 2021. No, yeah, 2021. We opened Henderson. From there, we started looking in San Diego. There was a turnkey spot available there.

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Basically, almost in the same back to back, we opened San Diego and then our Blue Diamond location here, our Blue Diamond indicator. Oh, wow. I didn't know that you had a location in San Diego. You didn't?(...) That's great. Well, I don't ever go to San Diego, to be honest with you, but I know. We opened that one in summer of 2022.(...) Then I think Blue Diamond opened on Cinco de Mayo 2022.(...) Blue Diamond opened first and then San Diego right after.(...) How do you guys set up managing various different locations? It sounds like you've done it so kind of quickly too.

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You're very fortunate that you have partners and stuff that are really operationally, it sounds like very strong in running restaurants, but even one in a completely different state, although not too far.

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That always seems like it's a huge challenge for a lot of businesses to maintain consistency and get everybody on the same page. What are some of the things that you do there?

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With the San Diego, it was kind of a test of how difficult it would be to operate something when we don't live there.(...) We opted to offer equity to two of our really good managers that we knew didn't have a family or could be a little bit more nimble.(...) We were able to move one kitchen manager and one front of the house manager out there. We gave them equity share in that location.

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They could kind of stay and Tom... And then they're invested in it too. Exactly. They're an owner. Which worked out great. We had a little bit of comfortability knowing that we had people that we trusted that were there.

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Tom, actually just like he's been there for two years. Him and his wife just came back here. He's going to open our Miracle Mile location next, but yeah, they were there for two years. Our kitchen manager, I think, was there a little over a year before he came back, but(...) it's not easy. It is not easy. We go back and forth. I was just there this week with Carlos. We're going to go back in two weeks.

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It's not easy operating a restaurant from this far away. What are some of the challenges that you deal with? Is it more like reliability of employees and trying to navigate that when that happens? Because you are so far. It's not like you could be like, "Oh my God, one of us has to go down there and help because..." We have had to do that in very rare scenarios. Someone will just get on a plane. That has been rare.

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California is not easy to operate a business in. To be frank, and I'm sure anyone who lives and operates a business in California already knows that. It's tough. There's a lot of red tape.(...) There's a lot of nonsense. I'll give you a funny story that kind of ties into something that we're going to talk about, which is we applied for our health inspection. We were ready to open, but you can't open without your health inspection. We had applied. My partner Regina handles all of that, and she was emailing them and calling them. At the time, they were still like COVID protocol, so nobody could just walk into the office and talk to anyone. You had to call. We ended up going down to another office. She had emailed. It was like months of this, and we're just sitting. We have to pay rent. Oh my God. We could not get anyone. I ended up going on, it was still Twitter at the time, I ended up going on Twitter. I found our city councilman on Twitter, and I tweeted him. I was like, "Hey man, we're trying to open a small business in your district. However, the health department refuses to call us back. We're sitting here paying rent, and you're killing our small business because your systems and processes are crap.

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What's going on?"

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He tweeted me back and said, "These people are going to contact you." Then the head of the help- How long did he tweet you back? It was quick. I can't remember. It's been a few years, but it was relatively quick, less than 24 hours. Do we say tweet hours, ex you back? Is it ex? I'm going to say tweet because I don't even use ex.

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The head of the health department called us back, and she was like, "Of course. This never happened. I don't know why this happened. You just somehow got lost in the shuffle, blah, blah, blah."(...) I was able to, through her, get our health inspection within 48 hours and get open. Where I know other restaurant owners that this same thing happened to in San Diego, and one in particular, waited six months to open. That's working capital that could have been applied to an operating business rather than that just sunk costs that you can't get back. Yeah. Oh, that's awful. That's a big one. Staffing is a big one. Obviously, in California, it's a very different work mentality than here, so that's been challenging. In what way?

(...)

More flexibility or less hours?

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Work is not that valued. When you look at work-life balance, life is very much more important than work in California, which is fine.

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There's a lot more sick days available, so people are often sick a lot.

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There's just not a lot of ...(...) I don't know. It's just a very different ... It's just different than what we're used to here. I feel like it's funny because I went to New York recently and I was talking to a friend that actually grew up in New York. I said, "Why don't you move out to Las Vegas?"

(...)

His wife is from Las Vegas. It's actually how we know them.(...) He's like, "It's too slow. It's too slow in Vegas." I'm like, "It's slow in Vegas?" I feel like it's pretty upbeat and it's really ... There's so many things going on. It's a 24-hour town. It's funny to hear different cities and viewpoints of different places because honestly, when I go to California, I feel that way. I feel like everyone is very relaxed and moves a little slower. They're very laid back on like, "Oh yeah, we'll get to that." When? Oh, whenever we get to it. I will say that has actually worked to our advantage a little bit because most places, because of the extremely high wages and the costs of everything going up in California, people are forced to run with a little bit less staff.(...) Customers are very accustomed to that. Most people, I will say in California, from the customer side, are very patient. They're very understanding that everybody's short staff. This is the circumstances. You might wait 10 minutes or whatever.

(...)

For us, applying our Vegas mentality in California, people are like, "Oh my gosh, they're so fast. They're always super efficient. The food comes out so quick because we're trying to push for what we're used to in Vegas." How do you create that culture within an area that you're not really in and that has just a different mindset on working? It's funny. Culture has been something that we're really focused on lately because as you grow, you're less present. How do you apply that culture company-wide and as we're going to start franchising and things like that?(...) It's actually very difficult.

(...)

I've watched a bunch of seminars talking about culture and what big companies like Taco Bell does or Burger King. They have all these top-level ideas about culture, but I don't necessarily see those reflected when I walk into a Taco Bell. I don't know if I asked any of their employees about their culture, what their answer would be. Not to dog anyone though because it is tough. I see that from the other side. We use a new tool called Opus. It's a learning and development app and it's all within our employees' phones. When they onboard with us, they get signed up into this app. It goes through, for instance, in the front of the house, it's a whole welcome and we have a video that talks about why we opened Taco Terrian. This is our mission statement. This is what we're going for. We're very community-minded. We put all that into an app and then there's questions and answers that they have to go through on this app. It doesn't just talk about culture. It goes through their entire training program from how to make margaritas, how to make coffees, how to work the front of the house, how to do customer service.

(...)

We're trying to incorporate more of that culture aspect into that learning and development tool, but it's something that for sure we struggle with. It is a hard thing, especially as you get more large and to your point, you can't spread yourself too thin. Having those challenges of how do you make sure that the same energy level is there is always kind of tough. I think having your managers buy in on your culture is helpful. We have a lot of really great managers who have been with us. Some of them have been with us since day one. Even some of them came from other restaurants where they've worked with either Carlos or my other two partners previously. We have a really long history with some of our managers and they've given us a really good buy in. But something that I want to start implementing this quarter is doing maybe a leadership day where we re-emphasize why we're all here, why we're all doing this. These are the things that ... And then let them give their input because I think when you allow your employees to feel like they're part of the game, just like when you said when we gave equity to Tom, when they feel like they have skin in the game or their opinion matters, I think they're going to give you a better buy in on that culture. Well, and their opinion is extremely valuable. 100%. They're directly in front of the clients. They see them every day. If you want to know exactly what you're doing right or wrong, they are the people that can give you that information. It is nice. I was going to actually ask you if you had done anything culturally.

(...)

At the bank, we try to do things where we celebrate successes of stories that really nail our culture and what we're all about as a company or do some types of gatherings like when we can. It's really hard when you have a lot of employees. With my husband's small businesses, it's much easier because it's very small, but doing those things I've found is very valuable because it makes them realize that you could say that you appreciate and care about people all the time and you could show them through just the work environment and flexibilities that you can give them. But when you do get to hang out and not talk about work and just hang out or talk about work but more in a fun way, it makes it more of a team approach, which is really nice. Yeah, for sure. We do have a Christmas party every year, so we invite everybody to our downtown location. We own another concept too, Good Morning Kitchen.

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Employees from both concepts come for Christmas and we do a huge party. That's really fun. We try, but it's not easy. I know, it isn't, and you guys do a lot.

(...)

You actually brought up something that was really interesting, how you had the foresight or just knowledge to find the county commissioner that was in your district to get movement on something. Tell me how you came about that. How did you learn the importance of knowing who runs your district and having that relationship with really voted in politicians from all of us? Yeah.(...) I've been into politics for a long time. My mom was a political figure for a while, so I've understood the processes for a long time. Back when I was doing my animal care business, I joined this political action committee, which was specifically geared towards animal rights and animal welfare. It was Nevada Political Action for Animals. I believe it still exists today, but for a while, I was the vice president. What I learned is the importance of lobbying, how accessible our county commissioners, our state legislators, all of these people, especially in our state of Nevada, are extremely accessible,

(...)

and how much they're here to help. That's their job. I think a lot of business owners miss that opportunity of connecting with their local leaders and utilizing the resources that are available to them. Even I ask, "Okay, what other resources?" There's grants available that people are missing out on.(...) There's all kinds of resources in economic development, all of these other things that they could ... But at the very least, you could use them to push through a permit that's stuck in the building department or something. I'll give you another funny example, and Commissioner Knapp won't mind because I've told this story before. When we were opening Good Morning, we moved some stuff around. I can't remember exactly what it was, but the building inspector came out and he said, "Oh, well, you have to open up this whole wall because I need to see what's in there. You move that wall." We were like, "No, but there's nothing in there. It's literally ... All we did was close up the one side." It was so minor. He was like, "Nope, you can't open. You got to rip out this wall." We were like, "Ah." I was like, "Give me a minute." I reached out to Commissioner Knapp's office, and at the time, I had never even met him.(...) Now this is years later, and I know he's just a super nice guy and he's very helpful, but I messaged his office and I said, "Hey, dear Commissioner, we are a very small business trying to open in your district.

(...)

This guy who works for the building department, I get it, is just trying to do his job, but it's so silly. There's nothing in the wall. He can poke a hole in it and shine his flashlight to see that there's nothing there, but to make us rip out the whole wall, it's going to cost us money that we don't have. It's going to cost us time. That's going to cost us more money in the end, please."

(...)

I don't think I heard anything back, but then the building inspector came back the next day and was like, "Well, you didn't have to tattle on me. I could have just talked to you." Oh my God, that's so funny. I was like, "I tried to talk to you, but you said no." You said, "No, tear it down." I did have to tattle on you, and we got it approved. It was done. In that instance, it saved us thousands of dollars. It saved us time, potentially a month of additional work.

(...)

Those are tiny little examples of things that you just have to ask. If it's something that they can't do, they'll say, "I can't do it, but maybe I can help you with this." Most of the time, they can do it.(...) I would agree. I have not had a whole lot of involvement with county commissioners or state legislators or anything, but during COVID with my husband's business, because one of them is a tattoo shop, boarding that business up and just realizing, "This, businesses are not a light switch. They can't be turned on and off, and you think that it's going to be okay." We lost half our staff in one day because they couldn't afford to wait around until

(...)

we opened back up. We really didn't know what phase we were going to be opened up in, so it was a very, very scary time.

(...)

I got linked up with Marilyn Kirkpatrick. I'm so thankful that we did, because she actually, first thing, got on the phone with me, was very accessible, gave me updates on calls, on things that happen, asked for my opinion on certain things. We met with her in person, asked how she can help, and we did. We were able to open up. We were only closed, I want to say it was almost three months, maybe around three months, but we were able to reopen. To be honest with you, tattoo parlors were not set to open for over six, which would have been devastating.

(...)

I do agree. That was one of the things that I realized, "Wow, there's a lot of power in, just as a business owner, knowing who these folks are, and them knowing who you are, and how much you care about the community." All of those businesses, and small businesses, I feel, have way more care, and appreciation, and pride in their community, and making sure that they're not just being a business, but they are helping all of the surrounding areas around them, and charities, and causes, and all kinds of things.

(...)

I do. I think that that's a great thing. It's a secret, almost. A lot of business owners don't necessarily know or want to take the time to really just make sure that they have those inroads, and it's like, "You really should." Or they're scared to rock the boat, they don't want to overstep. Most of these commissioners, and city council people, and even state legislators,(...) that's exactly what they're there for. They'll be the first one to say, "This is my job, I'm here to help you." But 100% of small business owner over just a general constituent has way more access and way more power, if you will,(...) to reach these people when you need something. Yeah.

(...)

That brings me to our next segue, if you will, because I really want to make sure that we cover some of the things that you've learned about marketing. Because you're self-taught, like what you talked about. You didn't go to college and things. You've just learned these things along the way, and really forced your own learning and development knowledge in spaces that really interest you, or that you know is going to make a difference in what you're doing.

(...)

Tell me a little bit about some of the things that you've learned as a small business behind brand messaging and marketing, and the power behind that. Yeah. I think some of the things that I learned early on was just about building your community. Building this community of people that feel like they're a part of your brand, and then basically they're going to be your greatest marketers, and they're free.(...) Everybody posting about your business,(...) all of these things, they're doing it for free.

(...)

That's going to be your greatest asset. Early on, we started ... I guess we have a leg up because we have a very niche market where we have something that's vegan, and the vegan community is very tight.(...) Think about it, only 3% of the population is vegan. That's why a lot of vegan restaurants close, because they're only marketing to vegans. You can't rely on a very small group of people to sustain a business that's as large as ours. We had to branch out, get people excited about our business, and a lot of that was the community partnerships that we forged, doing these viral specials, doing things that are going to get people excited about your business. I know when you have a restaurant that seems easier, but you could do it with a product, with a service. There's so many things that people can get excited about. You just have to find what excites them. Then featuring your customers. We frequently feature our customers on social media. We talk directly to our customers. I use words very intentionally like you, or me, or something so that I feel like people think that we're having a conversation, or they know us personally, even though they don't know it's me, Kristen, running the social media. I still use, "I want you guys to know about this special,"(...) thinking that talkotarian's a person. It's very intentional, even though people might not recognize it as intentional.

(...)

A book that I read early on when I started in this marketing journey was The Marketing Rebellion by Mark Schaeffer. He's a very cool marketing expert. It basically talks about how back in the day, it was faux pas for the business owners to be out there and in front of the brand. You were always hiding behind your brand.(...) You were supposed to be not seen. People did not want to see you. It's your company. Now it's the complete opposite. People want to buy from people that they like, that they see, that they feel is part of the community and that align with their values, essentially. Yes, you're not going to win everyone over when you do that.

(...)

I remember when we ... We didn't invite her, by the way. She just showed up. When Kamala Harris came in, when she was the vice president, she was the newly elected vice president, and she showed up just out of the blue. We had no idea she was coming.

(...)

We got so much hate from people just so angry that she came in, which, by the way, any vice president that came in, we would be like, "Sure, come in. We're not going to turn somebody away." You're not going to turn anyone that wants to come to the restaurant. Exactly. Come eat my food. She paid for her meal, by the way.(...) She took it to go.

(...)

We live in a very polarizing society, so I think the more you try to please everybody, the more you'll please nobody.

(...)

I'm not saying get political. I'm not even talking about political, because I think that can be very polarizing. We don't do that.

(...)

I think just putting yourself out there and humanizing yourself as a business owner. You're not perfect. It's not a one-dimensional character. Everybody has things that they say or things that they probably wish they would have said better and maybe not done at all.(...) It's all the lessons of life and learning.

(...)

That's what that book is about, just putting yourself out there, humanizing yourself.

(...)

If I remember correctly, it's been a long time since I read that book, but the catch phrase is "the most human business wins" or something. It's just about putting yourself out there.

(...)

I've seen quite a few businesses do this when they're struggling, say, "Listen, we're struggling. It ain't all roses here. We need you." People usually rally. They'll come and support that business that is struggling in that moment. I know when we were struggling downtown with all of the break-ins and all of this stuff, and I was dealing with the councilwoman and Metro and all these people, people rallied behind us because we were very vocal on social media. This is not fair to small businesses to constantly have to keep shelling out $10,000 every week when somebody smashes all of our windows. People want to steal a POS system that they're going to get no money out of. Exactly.

(...)

But that was us humanizing our brand. That was us putting ourselves out there. For better or for worse, that's what was going on with us at that time, and it worked in our favor. I love that concept of humanizing things. I think that there is a lot of fear behind people putting themselves out there and looking silly or not doing it right or people making fun of you or going terribly wrong.(...) My husband does a great job of that too with his companies, and that's one thing that I think is fantastic about him is he will just go for it and just be like, "Yeah, this is me."(...) I talk like I'm a radio host, and I can't help but make weird voices and accents whenever I'm in front of the camera, but I'm going to do it because I really do want to promote what I have to offer and make sure that people know this is a great place to get a tattoo or this is a great place to buy products from because we actually care about you. We care about our community, and we want ultimately you to have the best experience and be as happy as you can be. Exactly. I think that that's really, at the end of the day, what most people want to hear and know, and then they come in and they expect it, and when they get it, it's like they're pleasantly surprised and they're raging fans after that, which is great. 100 percent, and then they're sharing their tattoos. They're sharing all of these things on their social media.(...) I think another thing that was really instrumental for me early on in my previous business as a service-based business, and I know there's probably a lot of people in this city, I know there are, that have service-based business, was blogging.(...) I think blogging is something that's seen as archaic,(...) but it's really not. You're establishing yourself as an expert in that particular topic. For me, it was I was establishing myself as an expert in the pet care field. I would post blogs about, "Here's the top five things that you shouldn't do when you walk your dog." I don't even remember.

(...)

All of these blogs helped me rank as the first dog-walking business when you searched on Google.

(...)

By doing that, I was able to quickly scale, and people were finding me on Google, so it made it much easier for me to acquire new clients for way less money instead of paying for Google Ads and getting a $10 customer acquisition fee. This is a simple way, and now with AI, quite frankly, it's so easy to at least get headlines, and then you fill in a 300-word blog. I'm not saying don't have AI write your whole blog for you, but use the tool. Search engine optimization is very important. Those are all small things that people can do for free to create more awareness.(...) That's what is so unique about how we live now, and honestly, where technology is taking it is there's just this infinite amount of information out there. It's so hard sometimes to identify and pinpoint what you want your strategy to be or what you should be focusing on. It's one of those things that you kind of ... It's a test and learn environment almost where you got to figure out what works for you and make sure that you're paying attention to it and you're not just paying a consultant or a company to just do it for you. It loses its voice. It loses that human aspect of it a lot of times that I found, not saying that all of them are bad, but sometimes that can get lost, and then when that does get lost, so does your brand and your company. Social media managers and PR and marketers don't hate me, but I'm a huge advocate for doing as much in-house as you can. Now, these are the things that I outsource. I outsource photography because I am, even with my iPhone, not a good photographer. It sucks, but find somebody who specializes in the photography that you need. Print photography looks very different than social media photography.

(...)

We have somebody, Jay, that does very good social media photography, so I have him come in once a month, shoot everything that I need, and then I am the voice that puts it together with. That's something I outsource the photos, but then I'm still managing what that says about our brand on social media or email or however I use those photos.

(...)

I think email is something that a lot of businesses do not do, and they're missing a huge opportunity, huge, huge, huge. Like newsletters and things like that? I don't typically do newsletters. I guess it depends on the business, but I think just as a way to reach your customers. So think about it.

(...)

Let's say we have almost 60,000 followers on Instagram. Whatever we have on TikTok and Facebook, I don't remember. But let's say we have close to 80,000 or 100,000 people following our brand on social media. What if social media went away tomorrow? I mean, TikTok might close.

(...)

All of your database and every single one you have. That's why businesses are panicking on TikTok like, "Oh, I won't have a business after this." Well, why? Why did you not use that social media platform to convert those customers to your email so that when those social media platforms die or disappear, you can just send an email the next day being like, "Oh, hey, no more TikTok. Find us here now." Diversification. It's just the classic rule of diversifying all of the things so that you don't have all your eggs in one basket. Exactly. But most people don't see it like that or they don't think that people use email or again that it's outdated.

(...)

We have an email list of, I think, 33,000 people and our open rate is 50%.(...) Oh, wow. That's really good. But I don't send junk. I send like, "This is the special. Hey, BOGO margaritas. This is what's going on. These are our charity partner." I'm not sending junk about- And you don't obsessively pepper them constantly. No. I send two to three emails a month typically.

(...)

So people know that if they open it, it's going to be something that they want to see.

(...)

That's actually really smart. So what about when social media or things that you put out there tends to go terribly wrong? Has that happened to you where you've had a situation where you had every intention of it being, I don't know, not perceived as something bad and then all of a sudden it just kind of ... That's one thing that I think a lot of business owners are afraid of. They're fearful of negative attention.

(...)

There's nothing that we've specifically posted where people ... It wasn't received well.

(...)

I think we don't typically ... I mean, most of our posts are about food or events or things like that. So there's nothing really that controversial with our brand to post about.

(...)

I do think people ... There's trolls everywhere. So you have to ... Are these people really your customers? And that's what we have to focus on. Number one, there's a hide comment tool on most social media platforms. There's a delete comment tool.

(...)

Use those if you get a few trolls. But I don't worry that much about that because I'm not posting anything that out there controversial. Well, I'm thinking about the story that you told me recently of Watergate. Oh, are you talking about Watergate? Okay. That, to your point, it wasn't a post that you made, but it was something, a change that you made in your business to where you got a lot of negative virality in social media over it. It was one of those, I guess, fears that the power of just customer feedback and social media can have and how it can be negative and how did you manage through that and handle it? I think it's a really cool story. Okay. I've teed that up very poorly for you. That's okay. I got you. I know where you're going now.

(...)

Yeah. So Watergate was literally just like probably two weeks ago or three weeks ago. Oh, it was that recent? Wow. Okay. It just happened.

(...)

It was free water out on the counter that was infused with oranges and limes. I've experienced it. It's beautiful. It's very refreshing.

(...)

But it just became, on the backend, it became costly, number one. The cost of limes is extremely high.

(...)

Managing the staff to keep up with the water because people were filling their 40-ounce Stanley cups all day long so it would constantly be empty and then it's like we're already running short staffed. Those kinds of things became ... And then also the cost of those plastic cups, people were knocking them on the floor or they were taking five or six or putting some in their bag and taking them home. It all adds up at the end of the day.(...) Then also people were, frankly, not buying our beverages that we sell. They were just taking advantage of filling up, again, their daily Stanley water cup and not purchasing the beverages that we have. We had a conversation about it internally and I just said, "Hey," because we have a tool on our POS that allows us to compare our non-alcoholic beverage sales to our competitors in a way. It's not very accurate, but you could see where we were and we were falling really below. I was like, internally we had a conversation. It's like, "Okay, if you go to Chipotle, do they have water on the counter? If you go to this place, to this place?" We went through all the places that were quick service types of restaurants and none of them have water on the counter. We said, "Okay, what if we just do it by request only?"

(...)

That's what we did. Makes it easier though too for employees to manage making sure it's always filled and all of that stuff. From an experience perspective, I could see how that small change would actually be to the client's benefit. To us, it felt more of a personalized service. Like, "Oh, here's your cup of water." Maybe they would get a higher increase in tips or something. There was a little bit of thought, "Okay, people might be a little bit annoyed because it is change and our community specifically really does not do well with change."

(...)

We did it and then it was like, "Okay, we made some tweaks to it the first week and no one really said anything." We asked the staff, "Are they complaining?" They were like, "Yeah, a couple of people were annoyed but we told them what to say."(...) Well, so then there's a vegan Facebook group and it has 16,000 people in it. This group is notorious for taking people down when they don't like something. Like legit take down. I've seen it happen to other restaurants in that group. It's terrifying. That was when we opened, that was the biggest fear is somebody's going to try to take us down in this group. We mess up somebody's burrito and they're going to end us. It is a fear on social media that you're going to get canceled essentially.

(...)

Somebody posted, I think it must have been after I went to bed, but my business partner texted us in the morning in our group chat and she was like, "Hey, this is on Facebook." I was like, "Oh no." I went in the group and it already had 200 comments of being like, "How dare they take away the few in frouzed water.

(...)

It was life ending for these people."

(...)

I first started to comment as myself saying, "Hey, we still have free water. It's just behind the counter. You just have to ask for it." But then people were still mad about that.(...) What I realized is that people just got into that pile on mentality where it was almost as if it was a game. You explaining away, it didn't matter what your explanation was. It didn't matter what my explanation was. If I posted about the cups on one comment, then the other person was like, "Well, she said this on another comment." Even though there was a variety of reasons why we did it, it wasn't one reason.

(...)

After that, I just stopped. I was like, "I'm not doing this anymore." But as the day went on, there was dozens of posts. There was one that was like, "Give me fruit infused water. Give me liberty or give me death." People made memes that said Watergate and it was nonstop.(...) Only nonstop for 24 hours.(...) As soon as I could get the admin to take them down, another one would pop up. Some of them were funny. Some people got the joke. Some people were just so angry that they couldn't just walk in and get water off the counter.

(...)

Then I went to my partners and I was like, "I think we need to just be in on the joke.

(...)

As scary as that is, I think we need to be part of the joke."

(...)

I had said this to my husband at home. My husband is very opposite personality as me. He's so reserved. He's so quiet. He doesn't say anything unless he's thought it through a hundred times where I am the opposite. I'm a loose cannon.(...) I'm going to say whatever is top of my mind and I'm very direct and I'm very to the point. I had run it by my husband and he was like, "I don't know. People are going to get so upset. I don't think we should do that."

(...)

Then I have another employee that's in marketing school. I was like, "Hey, Anthony, I know you're in marketing school. Let me run this by you. What if we do a special and we say anyone who mentions Watergate at the register gets

(...)

an orders of margarita and mentions Watergate, gets a discount or free taco or something." He was like, "Oh, I don't think you should do that. In marketing school, they teach us that we really should just accept the customer feedback and take it to heart." I was like, "Oh, great. This is not the answer I wanted." All the opposite. Yeah. Everyone that I initially asked was like, "No." Then we had our group meeting with our other two partners, Dan and Regina. I was like, "Okay, guys. Just hear me out. What if we do this?" They were like, "Yes. Let's do it." I was like, "Yes." I fully expected them to be like, "No. It's too risky. They're already angry. Let's not poke the beast." They were like, "No. Let's do it. We can't just let these people basically tear us down over something that's not even true that you can still get a free cup of water. It's not that deep." It's water. It's just water. It's not that deep. You can stay hydrated. Don't worry about it. Then Regina was like, "What if we make t-shirts?"

(...)

This was I think on Thursday night and we were going to run this special for the weekend. She was like, "What if I call the t-shirt lady right now and I get t-shirts printed that say, "Keep calm. We still have free water," and we make all the staff wear them." I was like, "Do it." I was like, "I don't care if it costs us $300. Let's just do it." She did that. We made t-shirts and we posted. I made a graphic and I posted it in the group.(...) I said, it said Watergate huge at the top, like hashtag Watergate. It said, "Buy a margarita.

(...)

Mention Watergate and you get a free taco and a nine ounce cup of water."

(...)

I posted that and everybody went nuts. They were like, "This is why we love Taco-Tarian. This is how you market. This is how you clap back at people.(...) Don't let anyone take you down. This is nonsense." Everybody immediately was on our side. It had 200 comments within an hour.(...) I was so nervous for it to go wrong, but it didn't.

(...)

Again,(...) when you look at that, that was in a very niche group inside of a group. It was on Facebook only, inside of a private Facebook group. It wasn't even our whole customer base that this was marketed to. 70% of our customers are not vegan. 70% of our people literally had no idea that this was even going on. For those 30% of the people, we made ourselves part of the joke and it worked. Our sales were up that weekend.(...) Insane. At some locations, they were up 50% or 100%.

(...)

That's amazing.(...) I love when business owners fight back, in a sense, on some customers giving their feedback and just the power behind the keyboard of just, "Yes, okay. We want you to have a great experience every time." Or, "We wanted you to come here, but for whatever reason, you got upset over something that honestly is completely unrelated to my business, but you're making it about my business and now you're going to complain about it on Yelp or something like that." I like that there's a voice for customers to share experiences, both positive and negative, but what I don't love is when they do it almost as a tool to really hurt a small business that is trying really hard most of the time to give you something that you want.(...) It's okay to do it after you've given an avenue to allow them to make that right with you. I think that that goes a long way. I understand if you complain, you're like, "I reached out to management or something and wanted to talk to them and they didn't, so I'm using this as a platform because I'm really irritated over this. People need to know this is a consistent issue, if it's a theme, if you will." I always am reluctant when I read comments because of the power of customer feedback nowadays to take it with a grain of salt because if they didn't try other avenues to actually allow that business owner to try and make it right, which most of the time they always allow, then it's not fair to do that. No, I agree. That's what I was going to put, a caveat on this whole conversation, is that there were people, I think that there was a miscommunication with our staff and then the staff was like, "Oh, we don't have free water anymore." There was a few people that reached out to me directly through DMs or through email and were very responsive. If they had to buy a bottle of water that day or whatever, I refunded them the water.

(...)

We do take customer feedback very seriously when it's legit customer feedback and when people are reaching out to us and making an effort and then we make the same effort. We often give people customer credits if their food was made wrong or whatever the issue may be. Our staff are trained to, "Hey, if the food's taking too long, if there's an issue in the kitchen, give them a chips and salsa, give them an horchata or something."

(...)

It's not to say that we don't care about our customers, but in this instance, the absurdity of this hashtag watergate situation, we couldn't just let it go. We couldn't just let it die. We had to make it into something. I love that you turned it into something that was fun and energetic and more aligned with your brand like, "Hey, look, we got water." Yeah, exactly. "You can stay hydrated. Your skin will still be dewy. Don't worry. Everything's fine."(...) What do you think is next for Taco-Tarian? I know that you're opening up the new Planet Hollywood, which is really awesome.

(...)

A lot of people that are not aware of your brand that's outside of the Las Vegas and Southern California community is going to know Taco-Tarian, but what do you think is kind of next after that? Miracle Mile is next up. We should hopefully be open before March.

(...)

That's going to be inside Miracle Mile. Miracle Mile is the shopping area behind Planet Hollywood. For anyone that doesn't know that, if you live here, you should know that. Is that in the food court area? There was no actual food court in Miracle Mile, so that's what this is. It's basically a fancy food court is what they're calling it. Well, I don't know if they're calling it that. I am.

(...)

A lot of properties are doing that, but they're all really cool. They all are. Everyone's moving to this model because if you go through Miracle Mile, and it's funny, it feels so weird because I used to walk through there every day when I would go to Peep Show because it's the same parking. It's the same way I would go.(...) There's not. There's like blondies. There's La Salza. It's all sit-down places.

(...)

There's very few quick service options. Now they're building this kind of upscale food hall that will have really good quick service options for people that are either going to a concert, or they just want a quick bite, or they don't want to have to sit and wait and spend all their time at a restaurant.

(...)

It's us. It's Carnegie deli, or Carnegie Pizza. There's Houston's Hot Chicken.

(...)

Lobster Me and Fat Tuesday's are staying. They were already there, but they built this huge round kind of food hall there. It's close to the concert hall. Oh, the venue hall. Yeah. Okay. I know where that is. Then from there, we are in the process of starting to franchise.

(...)

Yeah. We're hoping to ... Well, not hoping to. We will be. Got to manifest.

(...)

We'll be a national brand soon. We're really excited about that. We already have been putting feelers out to our customers that have previously reached out about wanting to be part of our expansion.(...) We already have basically a list of 20 people that are very interested in franchising, and we are still finishing up the legal documents. As soon as we finish up the legal documents, then we can move forward with franchising, and then it's to the moon.(...) I love it. I love that you kind of always kept consistent, repeatable process and turnkey in mind, because that really does help when you move into the franchising space, having something like that already built out, which is really cool. It's definitely a learning curve, because none of us have done this before, so we hired kind of a consultant to help us through.

(...)

You're right. All of these systems and processes that we've been putting in place for the last six years, they really carry over, because basically when you start franchising, you build this document. That's like a document that you'll hand to the franchising and be like, "Here you go. Here's how you run a talk with Terri." Standard operating procedures. There you go. Yeah. It's a little bit scary, because we do have such a consistent brand, and we're very picky about we want food. If you eat in San Diego, it should taste the exact same if you eat at downtown.

(...)

We are a little concerned with that, but I think we just pick the right people, and we'll be off to the races. Well, that's really exciting.(...) Congratulations. I'll be the first one on saying that to you. Probably not, but that's okay.

(...)

Thank you so much for being on Through the Door, the insider's perspective on running a business. If you are tuning in for the first time, then you are very lucky to hear this amazing woman speak about all the things that she's learned along the way in business. Please subscribe to hear future episodes.