 Well, I'm really excited and I want to welcome everyone back to the eighth episode of get stuff done cast today I'm joined by a person who loves two things Mexican food and New York City, and I think we're tied on both of them. I Knew that this brand I was building which was really about Mexico It was really about telling this beautiful story of Mexico I had to take it to the next place after play at Garmin And I thought about a number of places I could go and New York City felt natural My good friend Dario Wolos, founder of Takobi Restaurant represents how an idea can become a successful business And New York City presents a wonderful opportunity for entrepreneurs at the opportunity to come and see you And walk through your factory and it was just like seeing number one workers good energy people were really enjoying the atmosphere a good clean environment And just watching the sunset park Brooklyn where you are thriving and growing So why don't you take us back? Because you have an interesting family lineage grew up upstate, right? I did take us on this journey. Totally. Um, thank you for having me here. It's uh, it's pretty cool to be in the blue room So I was born in upstate, New York close to town called Corning, New York My parents met in Mexico in Monterrey My mother grew up in that city in a neighborhood called Vista Hermosa And my father was born in France His parents were refugees during the second world war and they were Ukrainian refugees. Wow So my father ended up in Mexico for work as an engineer To build this factory in Monterrey for this American company called Corning Glassworks Which is from upstate, New York and after they were married They asked him to go to the headquarters in in this town and I was born there and my two younger siblings were born there And we grew up, you know with my mother She didn't speak English well yet But what she did know how to speak was the language of food And so she would share her food with all our neighbors and and it was one of the earliest memories I have of you know her sharing that That perspective of Mexico with all these people up there, you know, and it's interesting because you said something About the language of food Yeah, I think sometimes We underestimate the universal language of food even if you don't speak the dialect of a particular group A food has a way of communicating We're doing something in this city called breaking bread building bonds We want to have a thousand dinners And 10 people at each dinner all coming from a different cultural and ethnic background And using the power and the lubricating value of a meal to engage people to talk Because there is a lot of power in food and welcoming people With the meal totally totally. I mean, I think that's the basics of hospitality, right? It's it's what we do we we take care of each other Right, whether it's around the fire or around the kitchen table or you know in a restaurant I mean we take care of each other when and when you do that You know special things happen. It's it's breaks down barriers It's the level of intimacy and and it's what I love about hospitality Well said well said now. So your dad was from Ukraine and your mom was from Mexico Yep, well my my dad was born in parents in Paris from Ukrainian parents refugees. Yeah, so he's okay So did he speak of the language of your country in your town? So So he grew up speaking French and Ukrainian where his first two languages Then it and his life he learned English and when he ended up in Mexico He had by that point of natural ability for languages and okay picked up Spanish pretty quick Okay. Okay. So, you know food is a universal language and love is a universal language Nothing motivates you more than learn a language and see someone you love Totally and it was cool seeing my parents, you know when I was young My mom still has an accent to this day, right? But uh the language that they spoke at the beginning was really based on those two things you just mentioned It was love and food Love it. Love it. Is that what you found your love of food? Definitely my mother played a big role in it. My mother loves Mexico because she grew up there. She's patriotic national, you know, Mexicans love, you know, they love to celebrate their soccer teams They love all kinds of things, right? My father loved Mexico as a foreigner, right? So they they loved it the same thing for different reasons And um and it was in that I grew up in that two different loves for Mexico Love it. Love it. How did you find your way down to new york city? Oof, it's a long story But the the quick of it was so when I was still young in Mexico, I remember uh We did a trip up to uh new york, um My best friend, uh his sister and and his mother My sister and little brother and my mother and we went to the to the empire state building and I remember going to the top of that building And you know, I always had that picture in my mind of this this beautiful, you know, shining city, right? and uh many years later I was In Mexico, you know, I'd opened to combi and playa del Carmen And I knew that this brand I was building which was really about Mexico Um, it was really about telling this beautiful story of Mexico Uh, I had to take it to the next place after playa del Carmen And I thought about a number of places I could go and just new york city felt natural I just felt like this is the place where the whole world comes Right and the whole world can see this thing that we're building and so I literally packed up my taco stand in Mexico and put it on a boat And shipped it to florida and then I trailer it up to new york city and found our first location on elizabeth street in soho You know people often see this success and I always say that's your glory not your story You passed over it, but you stated that you packed up your taco stand So you're telling me of this successful business started with a little taco stand. It did. Yeah. How was that? Man, it was it was tough. You know in the early days, you know, they you know, they a lot of people Tell you and I've heard it being here. They say new york is tough They say you can make it here. There's a saying right that's you can make it anywhere Right. And so in this town I was in in playa del Carmen the bureaucracy there made it really difficult to do business It was really tough and it was also the time, you know when Just there's a lot of change happening in mexico with uh The cartels coming into the tourist zones and this and so it was a I was in my little taco stand and it was a challenging time And I had this this dream to share this story about mexico and I I couldn't get it to like stick in mexico People are like just another taco stand. There's a lot of taco stands here I was going to ask you that because you know the uniqueness of a good taco mexican food It's not because it's over set the market isn't oversaturated But in mexico, you know, you one of uh hundreds of thousands of taco stands like what happened that you decided to pack up your taco stand and come to Uh america and now you america you were an american citizen because you were born in america So it was easy for you to Come over with your taco stand. Yep. And you you actually placed it on a boat instead of saying let me leave this stand And let me buy another one when I come to america. Yeah at the time it was all that I had I I had sacrificed quite a lot to to get into this business, right? And and I wasn't making any money for the first number of years because like you know You're saying there's a lot of better taco stands out there, right? People have been doing it their whole life Right, but it it did come back to the some basic things that I was learning when I was there Which was the other thing you just spoke about which is you know love right that love and food those two languages What I started to see as I was making tacos Uh, well, there was other people making tacos is that the best tacos are the ones where the people who are making them Really put their love into it. Well, there's something really like special about food You can tell the difference when when you know the the chef or the cook in the kitchen really cares, right? And and so I started paying attention to mexican hospitality, right? And and what does that mean and and how do people you know when mexico? There's a saying mi casa es tu casa or sometimes when you meet some right? And sometimes when you meet someone in mexico, they say aquí tienes tu casa like, you know It's just part of how we this is it's how how people act there and uh And I really started to understand that it really meant that like people truly meant that every time they said it So much that it became cliche right right and so I had Started off this business But I had picked a name to represent the story of what I wanted to tell which were two words, right? And one of them was taco everyone in mexico had Eatin a taco or you know and all over the world And the other thing was a combi and a combi is this vw bus And so that's what I when I put those words together to combi I would Decided that first thing I had to do is I had to buy a vw bus Cut it open and make and that was my taco stand So that taco stand itself had a lot of meaning in it because it was really like where I actually You know started this journey bought that bus drove that bus through the south of mexico And really paid attention to all the little taco stands and all kinds of food stands all along the way And so you actually put that bus On the on the boat. Yep And brought it to new york. Yeah, what did you end up first first in florida in florida? Did you sell for a while there? No, no, it was just on its it was just on its way up to new york Okay, so the the destination was always new york city Yeah, so you started out selling on the street. Yeah, and take me the next step I'm in playa carmen. I'm selling tacos on the street there and The last pandemic right that a lot of people Forget about is was the swine flu Right, we call so the swine flu hit mexican tourism pretty hard So I was in playa carmen and one day, you know, it was 90 occupancy And in two weeks it had slowed down to 20. Wow. It's a big drop That's just you know, just just like what we experienced a couple years ago, right? Um, except it was it was much shorter. It was a couple months And and so what happened was tourism just dropped and it happened to come right at the end of the tourist season so it really hit everyone in in down there hard and I was just in the third year of my business and I thought I can't give up now and You know, a lot of people are like dario give up Like you can't beat these, you know, these these people make better than tacos than you and um And so I I decided that if I didn't take it out of mexico It wasn't going to live to see its next iteration right the brand that was building So I packed up that taco stand Got it on a bus in this And it's called puerto morelos, which is just next to cancun And there's boats that go, you know serve the caribbean kind of like transport ships, right? And I got it to the port of miami And then I picked it up there with a trailer and brought it to new york city And we're in new york city that you end up So I ended up for the first year. I didn't have a place Just moved around I just moved around and I was as I was looking for the like the our first home And and I would I got into the habit I was looking for my first piece of real estate in new york city where we could open up the restaurant And I didn't know the city So I You know got a bike and I just pedaled up and down the streets of manhattan all over manhattan And then I started pedaling across these neighborhoods in brooklyn and then I started across queens And and I started seeing this really magical thing is I would go from neighborhood to neighborhood And it was like going to different countries all over the world That's right And the food and and the people and the atmosphere and then at the edges of each of those neighborhoods You would see the people interacting from these different backgrounds and different cultures playing with each other making fun of each other Uh, it was some really special memories and I was new I was part of this what was happening You know until one day I was riding my bike down the street and I saw the owner Of this particular building on elizabeth street hanging up a sign that said for rent by owner And I knew that was my break because I didn't have the the resources or the capital To go through a broker right I had to go directly to an owner right So I see this this Guy himself who was an immigrant to new york in the 60s a metal worker, right? And that was his metal shop in the 60s right this Nice old man from austria who can he's one of my godparents today in the city? That was our first location in new york. Okay. Now we have um 11 locations in new york city And we're growing now around the country. So we have locations in miami in washington dc and later this year we're opening in Long island kinetic in chicago And so part of what you're doing now you went from being a restaurant to you're actually Producing the tacos as well. So in the early days we started, you know with this first taqueria, right? And a taqueria the way that they a taqueria exists in mexico It's not a full-service fine dining restaurant. And it's not a quick service restaurant either It's kind of in between right so tacos are fast But they did service at the table and so in order to make a good taco you need to make a really good tortilla So I searched for a good tortilla in new york those first couple years and we couldn't find one so in 2014 we said let's start making our own tortillas And that's a huge leap It you know it it's I think we were just trying to be the best what we do and it's you know And you had to kind of get to the core ingredients and so we said let's start making the tortillas and We have a a restaurant on 24th street. We started making the tortillas there And then we opened up a restaurant in the empire state building We started making more tortillas there and then Whole Foods came to us From williamsburg and they said you know what we'd like to buy your tortillas for Whole Foods in williamsburg So we would pack up our tortillas put them on the subway ship them to williamsburg And then eventually that kept growing and then we started all the Whole Foods in new york And soon we were selling more tortillas outside of to come we then we were using for our own talk That is huge right a large Chain store like Whole Foods Really could be a pathway into major business. This is the magic in new york, right? Like the you know someone at the office from Whole Foods was Eating at our restaurant tasted them and and kind of began this conversation Right and they were on their way to their one in williamsburg and that's how it all started Do you supply other outlets of the restaurants other supermarkets outside of Whole Foods? Yeah, we're all over the the country now We we ship to 40 states. We do Places like fresh direct here in the city. So we do online And we do chains like fresh market and city market in texas and pretty much, you know All over the country co-ops big big customers of ours How how large is your online presence? You know, is that a substantial volume of business? What percentage do you think come from online? It's a it's a really big percentage of what we do It's about 40 of our business today. That's huge. Yeah. Well, how do you see the future in the business? What do you see yourself expanding? As we've been growing one of the best parts about the whole thing is is you bring on a team of people Right and and and then that team Inherently wants to do more Right and so in our company, we have these three values fellowship resourcefulness and adventure And and that's kind of what's defined everything from the start in mexico to coming to new york All the people that work in to come we we kind of share that and and so if someone wants more adventure then Well, we got to we got to grow right? We got to take this to to more places and and a lot of what we're doing We really love mexico and we and we love sharing mexico with other people Right and and so I think when I came to new york city I didn't realize how strong the mexican communities were here. It is It's very strong very strong oftentimes I interact with the mexican council general And there's just this level of patriotism and you know, what's beautiful about this country We do not encourage abandon abandoning your home country We say bring Love of your home country and be part of the adopted country of america And that's the mixture of the of the country. We have a large mexican population in brooklyn and queens And everything from the food to the music Just really adds to the city. It's one of the things that when I got here as an adult The first place I went to the recommendation of some friends was the sunset park So go have go try the tacos in sunset park And I was walking down the street and I walked into a a bolega And I saw this picture on the wall of a soccer team in mexico I never heard of I was like, where's the soccer team and they're like it's from puebla and and but it turns out You know this there's such a strong community here just from puebla Right and it's one of you know, 32 states in mexico, right? And so in just in new york you have so much connection to the state of puebla Yes, that you have like subgroups sub municipalities of puebla Represented here and their soccer teams are on the walls each year when I was borough president We will hold this annual event Where the mothers that were from puebla Will come here and see their children for the first time since leaving mexico It was an amazing event that we used to do at borough hall We will have a couple of hundred families that will come in and That's when I realized such a large population here in brooklyn Came from on puebla. Well, that's this connection that's happening, right? There's a new york is connected to the entire world through its people, right? And and so there's whatsapp groups and messages going back and forth between here in Puebla and here and everywhere, right? And and people are sharing what's happening in both places all the time and it I think it it's enriching both places It does The person who's thinking about at there right now at their little stand A little caught they're thinking about going into a business like this. What would you give them as advice? I think, you know first you got to follow your heart, right? Do do it if you love it And second, you know, just don't give up Right and it's pretty simple. I think things to stick to Uh, you know, there's there's going to be good times and there's going to be bad times But you know, there's always another day and so you just got to follow your heart and and just never give up And and I think like, you know, it makes for a Just an amazing journey You could never win the game if you don't get in the game And you got in the game and now you have an amazing restaurant Takonbi. Good luck to you. I can't wait to get over there and try some more of your taco Thank you, mayor. Great to see you. Thank you for coming in And this is the information I wanted to share today. I hope to see you for another episode of get stuff done cast