Today we’d like to introduce you to Leti Saldivar and Jose Saldivar.
Leti, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Pepe’s Taqueria was a lifelong dream of my husband, Jose (aka Pepe) Saldivar. Jose had been a head waiter at the long-time established La Familia Mexican restaurant in the West 7th district of Fort Worth for several years. The restaurant sold from the original owners and was purchased by my family. This is when I got to know Jose. I had never worked in the food industry before but was extremely eager to learn. Jose showed me the ropes from hostesses, cashier, bartender, and server. He had so much patience with me and we had so much fun working alongside each other. We fell in love and got engaged on a busy Saturday night at the restaurant surrounded by our families. Jose was very good at his job but he always expressed to me his dreams about owning a taco trailer. He wanted all of his hard work to truly benefit us directly. My family eventually decided to sell the restaurant and at that point, Jose’s dream became our dream. We left the restaurant and had a brief stint together at Mezcales Mexican restaurant while we saved up money and scoped out food trailers. Jose also continued working for his brother painting houses and I continued working for the school district to keep regular income coming in. One day I got the call at school from Jose that he finally found the trailer for us. He went and picked it up same day in August 2019. After a couple of months, we opened up in November 2019. We were so excited!!! We set up our taco trailer in the Stockyards initially which we thought would be immediately successful but it was not. We were set up just a block away from a highly established Mexican restaurant there and that, plus other factors, proved to be a challenge. One night we decided to take yet another risk and place ourselves closer to Billy Bob’s for a big concert they were having. We got so busy that night and got a taste of the kind of money and success we wanted for our business and family. Since that night, we’ve never forgotten that feeling. That feeling, along with our kids and our work ethic, has been our driving force to succeed. Jose never saw a plan B to this. He went into this always saying to us “this will work out”. And we truly have been blessed.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It most certainly has not been a smooth road but that never stopped us. We initially thought setting up in the Stockyards would mean immediate success but it did not. Only a month and a half into opening up our generator broke down in the middle of an event and we had to close it up immediately. Trying to push ourselves out there to breweries and businesses that had never heard of us to take a chance on a new food trailer was a challenge. Covid hit only five months into starting out but Jose, being the innovative entrepreneur, came up with the idea of us doing neighborhood pop-ups right away.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Pepe’s Taqueria?
Pepe’s Taqueria is a taco trailer based out of Fort Worth. We do private events and neighborhood pop-ups. We also provide breakfast tacos daily to Summermoon coffee shop at both their South Main and West 7th locations in Fort Worth. We also provide breakfast tacos to the world’s largest honky tonk, Billy Bob’s Texas, for every weekend concert.
Our menu is small but solid. We sell Mexican street tacos, quesadillas, burritos, nachos, chips and queso. Our meats are Carne asada, Chicken, Al Pastor, Barbacoa, and our most popular is Pepe’s Mexican brisket. Our featured item is our tacos. We both grew up eating traditional Mexican food and that’s how we wanted to keep our menu, especially our tacos. The simplicity of just the meat, onion, and cilantro on a corn tortilla with a splash of salsa and some lime is truly delicious.
We are truly proud that we have stayed focused on what we want to do with our food. It’s so easy to look at what others are doing and trying to compare yourself to them but that’s something that’s not fair to do to yourself. We have learned from our mistakes and have grown from that but we have also stayed the course and what we want for our business. Jose and I are truly best friends and love working alongside each other. He is the food mastermind and I’m the event and social media person. We truly make a great team.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I’ve never been much of a risk-taker but when I met Jose and his dream became our dream, I was all in. Risk-taking for Jose comes so naturally to him. When people would say to us “well good luck guys. I hope it works out”, Jose would always reply with “oh it will work out”. And it most certainly has. Just because you are a risk-taker doesn’t mean you don’t have a plan. Jose is incredible with crunching the numbers for running our business so he knows how to truly maximize our profits. If there is something he doesn’t know how to do, he figures out how to teach himself. He has the “there’s always a way” kind of attitude. His determination for our business to succeed is what gave him the confidence to leave the restaurant job he had and fully focus on the taco trailer.
Pricing:
- Private event minimum: $300.00
Contact Info:
- Email: tacospepe1@gmail.com
- Instagram: pepestaqueria.fortworth
- Facebook: pepestaqueria.fortworth
Image Credits
Summermoon coffee shop
