Restaurant Growth In The Niches With Sam Fonseca from Roll-Em-Up Taquitos

publication date: Feb 23, 2023
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author/source: Jaime Oikle with Sam Fonseca
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Building a brand and growing it is never easy. But having a fun culture and a niche product makes it all the more exciting. Join Jaime Oikle of RunningRestaurants.com as he talks with Sam Fonseca, COO at Roll-Em-Up Taquitos, the nation's first taquito-focused franchise, about their brand's origin and growth. Before joining the Roll-Em-Up Taquitos team, Sam spent years in the restaurant and food industry, working at popular spots like In-N-Out, Raising Cane’s, and Dave's Hot Chicken.

They discuss:

Be sure to check out the episode. Find out more at Roll-Em-Up Taquitos and Running Restaurants.

Thanks to our episode sponsor, Zinch - Financing That Works.

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Restaurant Growth In The Niches With Sam Fonseca from Roll-Em-Up Taquitos

Welcome to the show. I've got a great episode for you with Sam Fonseca, COO and partner at Roll-em-Up Taquitos. Welcome, Sam. How are you, man?

I'm doing great. Thank you very much. I greatly appreciate the time. Humble to be here with you. Thank you very much for reaching out. 

 

Brand Origins

I was just out your way. If I was paying attention, I would have made sure I hit a location for you guys. Tell us about the brand. Where are you guys mostly? What's going on?

The brand actually is Ryan Usrey's dream. His mom used to cook them. Mama Karen used to cook those taquitos, and they absolutely loved them. For every single event that they had or whatever type of party they had at their home or that they were invited to, Mama Karen would always bring taquitos. It was just something that they absolutely loved. People would just tell her, “When are you going to open up a restaurant and sell these things because we love them?” They've always talked about it. Then, unfortunately, Miss Karen passed away.

Ryan and his father, Ron, and Ryan's wife, Tiff, the whole family were just lost without her. Ryan has always been in the clothing industry, and he's great with design. He was just down on his luck, and he had just lost his mother, and he just said, “You know what? I know exactly what I'm going to do to make sure that I continue my mother's legacy. I'm going to start a restaurant just selling her taquitos, and I'm going to call it Roll-Em-Up.” He was going out looking for sites, looking for anybody that would give him an opportunity.

Then he found his first site and opened it on June 15th, 2019, out in Chino Hills, California. Roll-Em-Up Taquitos got started, and the major drive behind opening this restaurant is to make sure that he continues his mother's legacy and to make sure that everybody gets to taste his mom's famous taquitos. I was introduced to the brand actually through a customer that I met when I was working at a previous concept years ago. The customer, we sat down with, I actually was introduced to this customer through a customer complaint. I was working with the previous brand. 

I went out to meet him. I apologized for his bad visit and wanted to turn it around. He was happy, and he was grateful that we were able to have a better outcome the second time around. In passing, and I don't know why he did this, but he just said, “Sam, can I give you a couple of options of restaurants you might want to try out?” I said, “Sure. Nobody has ever done this for me in the past.” He said, “You have to go check out this place called Roll-Em-Up Taquitos. It's in Chino Hills, not too far from here.” I looked at him and I said, “What is it?” He said, “It's just Taquitos.” I thought, “That's interesting.” Usually, taquitos are a side dish at a Mexican restaurant, and they're the X amount of options on the side.

I thought, “This is interesting.” I decided to go try it out, and I took my whole family. As soon as we walked in, there was reggae music playing in the background, the graphics looked great, and I thought, “How many of these locations are there? There's no way that this is the only one.” You could see it from a restaurant's point of view, somebody has been in the industry, and you could see, hey, this cannot be the first because it just looks too sharp to be the first. It was. We tried the product, and we absolutely loved it. It was my wife, our kids, and my daughter, who I think only eats cheese. We were all happy. 

That sounds right. 

In a family, when you find a restaurant where everybody loves it, you're like, “Yes. Let's add this to the list, another place where we can all go eat, and nobody's going to be upset at the options.” We loved it. Before I left, I just went up to the counter and asked, “Is the owner here?” They said, “No, he just stepped out for a little bit.” I gave him my business card. He called me about an hour later, and we've been friends ever since. 

I called him, he gave me a call, and he said, “You're over at the time I was with Raising Cane’s, it's an amazing brand.” We just started talking. I said, “Now you have a friend in the business. If you ever need anything, just call me.” For three years, he would call me, I would call him, check in, and see how he was doing. If there was anything I could help him out with, he would call me, and back and forth. After three and a half years or so, he said, “When can we stop being friends in the business and be partners in the business?” 

There you go. 

That was just an awesome time. Now I've been here for going on five months, extremely excited about what we have going on. For myself, it's so impactful to be with a brand that I was introduced to by a customer, actually through a customer complaint. We went from a customer complaint to winning the customer back over to that customer now actually guiding me into the role that I'm in now. When you talk about complaints, it's amazing what you can get out of a complaint or how you can impact that customer so much so that they actually help you land your next career. I’m excited about that.

 

From a customer complaint to a career opportunity! Never underestimate the power of turning things around.

 

Thanks for sharing the journey that's behind there and how you guys got involved. It's good to see the passion behind the brand. My next question was how long they've been around? It's a short timeframe. A lot has happened in three years, and I go to the website and I see locations, and I see coming soon. What's going on with the growth?

 

Rapid Expansion

What a great question. We just finished up the month of January. In January, we opened up three restaurants in a matter of 21 days. We opened up a location in Las Vegas, which is our first location out in Nevada. We opened up our first location in Irvine, California. Then we opened up our tenth location for the company out in Corona, California, our second location in the same city. Just excited. One of the things that Ryan did well was making sure that he had a great product. Number one, it starts off with the product. You have a craveable product. 

You have a product that people are going to rave about. That's what's going to help you expand. That's our number one focus is making sure that we provide to the customers the great product that Mama Karen introduced to her close friends, and her loved ones when she would have events at her home or elsewhere. We are absolutely committed to a great product. The number one reason that has led to us expanding is for folks to try it out. Then, when we have different individuals that are coming in that are interested in franchising, they look at our concept. 

If you ever get a chance to go into our restaurants, we have the kitchen for display. We don't hide anything. We want the customers to be part of the process. There's a connection there. There's a connection when the customer can see what's happening in the kitchen, what you're doing, what your team members are working so hard to make sure, and they get to see it, and then they get to taste the great quality of the product. That's when they're sold. That's when we have people asking, “Are you guys franchising? What's going on? How do I get my hands on this because I see this as being the next thing?”

 

Transparency is key! At Roll-Em-Up Taquitos, we let customers see the magic happening in the kitchen. Building trust one taquito at a time.

 

Ryan and his team have done a great job prior to me coming on board to make sure that they were executing at a high level with their product quality. Then folks just started finding out about it. The growth through social media has been amazing. We currently have 128,000 followers for our ten restaurants. Per restaurant, the amount of followers that we have and the word that gets out, whether it's TikTok, Facebook, whatever it may be, LinkedIn, folks look at the product, and they see something different. That's what I saw myself.

As a customer and also as an individual, I thought, “I know that this company is going to take off because there's nothing else out there like this.” I live in Southern California. There are just a ton of Mexican restaurants and different options, but I've never seen one taquito-centric, focused on just that. That's the number one focus. We want to make sure that we have a great product. That's what spoke to me. This is somebody that also wanted to be a franchisee of this concept because I thought, “This is totally different. It tastes great.” 

The vibe and just the environment of the restaurant. If you go into our restaurants, we're serving taquitos and we're blasting reggae music. Those two shouldn't go together, but they work out great. When I started asking, “Let me know, I need to know the background. Why are we playing reggae music at a place that sells taquitos?” They said, “When we first started off, we had just crazy lines and we were playing different types of music.” 

Tiff, one of the founders of Roll-Em-Up, was back there rolling taquitos in the back. She was back there hand rolling the taquitos and you could see that the wait time was a little long. She just started feeling like, “We've got to change the vibe. We've got to change it.” They were playing, I don't know what kind of music they were playing. Ryan is cooking taquitos. His wife is rolling the taquitos in the back of the house. 

She keeps telling Ryan, “Change the music. Put some reggae.” Ryan is telling Tiff, “We're too busy to even mess around with the music.” Then out in the dining room, she saw customers like this with their arms folded and they were just waiting for their order. She just changed the music to reggae music and she goes, “Sam, it was instant. The guy that was like this, all of a sudden we start playing reggae music.”

You cannot, you have to move. 

She said, ever since then, we absolutely are committed to that. It's a fun environment. We don't take ourselves very seriously. We want to have a lot of fun and we want the customers to come in and feel that. 

That's cool, Sam. I wrote down a few things. I want to come back to a number of them. I want to come back to digital stuff. I want to come back to what you're doing with mobile and social. On the franchising side, I'm sure you have a number of folks already and you must have interested partners because I see the list coming. What do you guys look for with someone that's franchisee potential? 

Great question. We are looking for people who have restaurant experience. A lot of folks reach out to us who love the restaurant and they go, “This looks easy. How do I do this?” They've never run a restaurant before. Unfortunately, that's the biggest compliment when somebody goes, “You guys make it look easy. Thank you because running a restaurant, any restaurant is a lot of hard work. It takes somebody that's going to be passionate. That's what we're looking for. We are looking for individuals who have restaurant experience, who love the restaurant industry, and just are absolutely passionate about serving somebody a meal. 

 

Running a restaurant isn't easy, but with passion and dedication, it becomes a rewarding journey.

 

We take great honor in serving others, serving your community, and being part of the community. You have to be focused on people. You have to be focused on growing your people. If you're going to open up and you say, “Sam, we want to sign up for X amount of restaurants.” We get it, everybody's into the business to make a profit. We understand that, but there also has to be a focus on people, people development, and helping those around you who work with you to achieve more in their lives. 

You're talking to somebody here who started off wiping down tables and slicing tomatoes at In-N-Out Burger at the age of seventeen years old, who absolutely fell in love working in the restaurant industry because I was impacted by great leaders and that they were able to help me grow as a person, as a leader. We're looking for those types of individuals who already know, understand, and most importantly, love the restaurant industry. 

We're looking for people that care for others, that want to be part of their community. When we put a Roll-Em-Up in your city, we need that franchisee to be the face of Roll-Em-Up in our community, whether you're impacting schools, going out, or trying to figure out how we can do different fundraisers for our community. We want to make sure that we make a difference where we're working. That's exactly what we're looking for in the next franchisee. 

It goes beyond that it is a business and people do it. They do it to be profitable, but there's so much more behind it. You talk about the growth, you're an obviously quick, casual fast food. I mean, yes, workers, they are a lot of times are trans is not the right word, but they're part-time, they're full-time there. There may be students, but a lot of people like yourself and a lot of people in the industry progress through that, but it's only through a strategy through a company that shows caring, that shows growth. There is a path where you can be a manager, a general manager, a regional manager, and so forth. 

If you give people the right direction, sometimes that can set someone up for success. That is a big deal. I applaud that. Your episode is going to come out probably close to an episode I recently recorded about delivering. The book is called Delivering the Digital Restaurant. Focused on the mobile stuff, third-party orders, the changes that happen with COVID, and so forth. I'm assuming you guys as a fun brand, definitely have, I'm sure a young audience, a tech-savvy audience, everyone's got the phone. What are you guys doing digitally to make life easier to sell more stuff? Is it apps? Is it pickups, or curbside? There's a lot going on there. It's a big deal. 

 

If you give people the right direction, sometimes that can set someone up for success.

 

Digital & Social Marketing Strategies

You know what? We launched our app and that's been doing great. The app has been huge. It's another digital line. Third-party, definitely in that game, is extremely important. We've also looked at our restaurants and what our customers are telling us. Our folks want food delivered to them. They want to be at home. Something interesting happened during the whole COVID situation is customers just became different. They are a little bit more aware of like, “If I can stay home and I can do work from home or homework or hang out with friends or I'm a gamer and I don't want to leave because I'm right in the middle of getting to the next level. 

I don't want to leave but I am getting hungry. My stomach is telling me I'm getting hungry, but I don't want to stop playing that game. What I'm going to do is I'm going to order a third party.” Our third-party, our online business is definitely one that has just taken off. With the app, it's so easy for you to order on the app. We are now adding also gift cards to our platform so they can have digital gift cards. It just makes it very easy. If you can just order and you're X amount of miles away, you order it by tells you, “You're going to have X amount of time to pick it up. You show up, grab the food, and take on off.” 

We are 100% committed to making sure that our customers come in, feel the environment, and have fun, but we also understand that it's a different time. Looking at our social media, and how we communicate through social media. What is important? For example, right now, where next Sunday is going to be the big game. We want to make sure that we are marketing to that, “You guys can order a catering order and be the first ones at your party instead of bringing the usual suspects, you're going to bring taquitos and you're going to have something different to offer the rest of your friends.” 

If you're thinking about, “What should I offer? What should I bring to that event?” Whether it's work, whether it's for your home, or a party, you can bring a party pack with you of 25 or more taquitos. We're trying to think about the time of the year, how we use our social media, and what is it that we're talking about. We look at other great brands and benchmark to see what they have going on. We're talking about the big game Super Bowl coming up here next Sunday. Also, we start looking towards the end of the year. 

What else is coming up and how do we use social media to communicate to our folks? “You have young ones that are about to graduate from high school and want to give them another option of what you can get that individual. We have gift cards available to all the grads.” Utilizing that platform to communicate with our customers to remind them if they haven't been to our Roll-Em-Up in a while to remind them what they're missing out on. If at any time we want to promote a certain product, social media it's incredible. It's absolutely incredible how many people you can connect to in a matter of seconds. 

I might come back and ask about TikTok. I'm curious there. I'm just curious, but percentage-wise, there is a sweet spot where your store is like, “It's great. We got 80% in-store, 20%, ordering or 60/40 50/50.” Is there a sweet spot that you think about that you'd like to drive business or just boost them both up as much as possible? What do you think? 

We want to do as much as possible everywhere. Our first location also has a drive-through. Out of our ten restaurants right now, we have three that are drive-through. One in Amarillo, Texas. One out in Las Vegas, Nevada. Then our original restaurant here in Chino Hills, California. We have three restaurants that are drafted. We are also looking for drive-through restaurants. 

We want to make sure that we do a great job in every single platform, whether it's third-party online through the app, or through our drive-through. As far as a sweet spot, there definitely is a sweet spot because we don't need a 3,000-square-foot location anymore. We just don't need that because we much rather have a location that's half that. If we can find a location that's 1,500 square feet, perfect. We want that place to be busy. There's something beautiful that happens. People attract people. 

That's right.

When you have something and where it's a little bit tighter, and you see that there's customers there. The tables are full. There's a line out the door. What a better billboard. You cannot buy a better billboard than folks standing in line and that line going out through your doors. We are definitely focused on that. Another big thing about the square footage that we're looking for is for us who we are growing corporate restaurants and we're also growing franchise restaurants. We believe in our brand. 

 

A busy, smaller location is the best billboard you can get! People attract people, and we love seeing our tables full and lines out the door.

 

Right now, we're at 70-30. Seventy percent of our restaurants are franchises, but we're looking to excel at opening corporate restaurants. We want a 50-50 mix, if not 60% corporate to 40% franchise. We want to grow this from my previous brands that I had the blessing to work with with the in and out family-owned, all corporate restaurants, raising canes, majority of the restaurants are now company restaurants. We want to provide those opportunities that I talked to you earlier today. Folks that join the corporate team. 

We want to make sure that they have great opportunities to grow and take over my position. We are absolutely committed to growing corporate restaurants and franchise restaurants with the right franchise partners. Now with ordering the way that we're doing now, our franchisees are excited because now they can start looking at sites for half the dollar amount because we don't need 3,000, we don't need 2,500. If we could find something between 1,500 or actually even smaller than that, we have a location that we're going to be looking at. That's a thousand square feet because we've done some things here to streamline the business and we don't need a huge restaurant. 

 

Future Expansion Plans

We didn't, we didn't touch on this, but it's a perfect time to ask you. Geolocation, obviously, is based on California there, but you already mentioned Nevada, and you mentioned Texas, where else are you looking to expand? Where else are you getting interest from? Where else should partners who are here in something like this say, “I want to find out more.” What do you think?

We are open to anything. The most important thing is that we have great partners in the business. If there is a partner in the business in Orlando, we want to find that individual, we want to have a great working partnership, we have the infrastructure to grow, and we have the infrastructure to get the product out to states where we're currently not at. I think our number one focus instead of a location because we're open to anything, is making sure that we have the right partner in the business. We already discussed what we're looking for in those partners, but we are open. 

Let's close with a TikTok. Out of curiosity. It's a brand that I always think about as the fun little kid videos, but restaurants and other people are starting to use it. How do you guys use it?

 

TikTok Success

The numbers that we are seeing on TikTok are just insane because we can post something and within an hour, hour and a half, you're looking at 1.4 million views. It's just insane. How often does that just get tagged on? Again, we have something that's very unique. A lot of burger places and you have the huge giants in the industry, one that I was extremely blessed to work with, that absolutely when they put something out, it goes viral and it's beautiful and people love it and they have a cult following. 

There's a lot of burger places. There's a lot of this, there's a lot of that. When you do something with Roll-Em-Up, it's totally something different. Then we get the comments back, “When are you coming to Colorado? When are you coming here? When are you coming there?” It's so exciting because our customers are literally telling us where to go next. We're reaching folks that are on the other side of the country. They're going, “We have a spot for you in New York.” Maybe about a month and a half ago, I got this email for a great site out in New York.

I sent it over to Ryan and said, “Look, cannot wait until we open up in New York.” It's just very humbling and excited to hear that folks want us out in their area and they want to try what other folks are talking about. Look, you cannot do too much with what we have. We're not going to change it up. We're not going to put this and that and we're not going to go crazy. We believe in what we have and we put it out there. It's crazy how TikTok just takes it and then it reaches so many views in a short amount of time. It's incredible. 

Interesting to see that it is one of the bigger channels now. I got to plug more into that. This has been good, Sam. I appreciate you. We haven't hit him with, I have RollEmUp.com. Hit him with anything else. Your social channels, your tag, that's what I'm looking for. Hashtag this or your app signs. What do you got? 

The biggest one is definitely on Instagram. You guys can follow us on Instagram @RollEmUp. Taquitos on Yale. Please give us some feedback when you go visit our restaurants. On LinkedIn, you guys can also follow us there. Also for my LinkedIn over at Sam Fonseca as well. Also on TikTok. We are at Roll-Em-Up. Those are where you guys can find us and we'll be coming to your city soon. 

Very good stuff. That was Sam Fonseca at Roll-Em-Up Taquitos. You can find them on the web at RollEmUp.com and other places that Sam mentioned. For more great restaurant marketing service, people, and tech tips. Stay tuned to us here at RunningRestaurants.com. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Sam. 

Thank you very much. Appreciate your time.



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