“That was the first time people were trying our product and the first time we thought, you know what? We have something here.”

Eric: October was when we started to make things happen.

Seb: It wasn’t until our fourth member joined, Lenny, who is our head of product, who came up with the Birria concept with the consummate and the dip and this six or seven hour cooking process, when we finally had a physical product that we were proud of. Once we had developed that complicated recipe, we were able to separate ourselves from Tex Mex and the other Mexican food people are accustomed to here.

Lila: Where did this come from? Do you guys like to cook? Are you good chefs?

Seb: I have always been surrounded by great cuisine and cultural food from my French and Korean sides. My stepmom also works with chefs. She has her own start-up called Chefs for Impact where she meets with high-end chefs who are focussed on sustainability and food education, so food and cooking has always been a part of my life. And I love to eat. In this town, a common complaint is the lack of that good late-night snack.

Eric: Especially Mexican food.

Seb: Exactly, and this is something we wanted to jump on. 

Eric: Remember in Madrid those tacos we had? 

Seb: Yeah, we had about 20 each.

Lila: So you guys are best friends?

Seb: Yeah, pretty much since the first week of school.

Lila: That’s so nice. Can you tell me about the cooking process? You said it takes about six hours?

Seb: We simmer the broth with the short ribs and whatever meat we are using for about five to seven hours. That’s usually the best amount of time. We use these huge opts to make big batches.

Eric: We serve 250 tacos with two big pots. We dip the corn tortillas into the consummate.

Seb: Yeah, to make it all oily and to soak up the flavour. Then we put it on the heat and add the meat with cheese, cilantro, onion, a little bit of lime, close it up and make sure it’s really cheesy on the outside as well.

Eric: Crisp up the cheese, almost like a cheese crust.

Seb: You get a little cup, as well, with some extra broth that you can dip your taco in.

Eric: This is why we are excited for future events where the taco can go straight from the grill into a customer’s hands instead of having to transport it.

Seb: Something we have had to tackle is finding a way to get it to the customer as hot as possible, because we have been making them at home and then transporting them.

Eric: We also have the guacamole as well, which is all homemade.

Seb: Yeah we have a few other menu items as well upon request. Chips and guac is a very popular one. People really like the guac.

Eric: And the Elote.

Seb: We have the Elote corn, which is a Mexican street food. We add tajín mayo, feta cheese, a lot of lime and we start to char the corn for a little bit. We can do quesadillas as well. We are going to try and aim for integrating more vegetarian options.

Lila: Pablo had told me in his interview that the morning of the Latinflow event you didn’t have the legal ability to distribute the tacos on the premises.

Eric: The Rule was sceptical about allergies. So we had to provide our allergen certificates and food hygiene training. You have to have two certificates per person. So, everyone who is on our team has their allergen and food safety certificates. And then the business itself is a registered business. We also had to have our kitchen pass a heath inspection.

Lila: So, you said that The Rule was the biggest event you’ve catered for to date, and you gave out 200 tacos. Was this manageable? How did that go?

Seb: It was honestly very manageable. 

Eric: Communication was key.

Seb: Yeah, we had Eric managing the team at The Rule. Pam was managing the team in the kitchen. Clara and I were running back and forth delivering different batches. We had to figure out how much demand there was over at The Rule. How many tacos did we need? We had to communicate to the kitchen when veggie tacos were needed and how long until the next batch. Communicating with the bouncers and bringing everything up to the top floor and trying to keep it hot and ensure everything ran smoothly. At the beginning of the night we had a little bit of friction, because we didn’t expect there to be a line of forty people waiting for a taco. It was a huge line.

Eric: At 10.30pm I was in communication with Seb, and I said, listen, I think for the first batch we’ll serve around twenty tacos. Just keep it light, not many people are here. And then at 10.55pm I was like, send everything we have. As many tacos as you can as soon as possible. It was go, go, go. Seb was sprinting back and forth. Everyone was working really hard to manage the demand. There was no system in The Rule because this had never been done before, so we had to create our own system as the night went along. That’s why, when we move to bigger events, the logistics side of it will come naturally.

Seb: Yeah, The Rule was great practice for us. The kitchen has improved so much. Once we got over that initial stress, we had music playing and everyone was having fun and there was no more stress.

Lila: How many students are in the team?

Seb: The core team is seven. The total team including marketing and logistics is thirteen.

Eric: Something that surprised me, but has made me so happy, is how many of our friends who are willing to do odd jobs, you know, offering their expertise in whatever it is. It's been really nice to see that.

Seb: This is what we wanted to project to feel like all along. This is not just our start-up, this is a community start-up. We want everyone to be involved. I remember when we were trying to decide our logo, we put some options up on our Instagram story and allowed people to vote. We wanted to see what everyone liked the most. A couple of the volunteers we had for the Latinflow night messaged us a couple hours before and said they would love to help cook. Another amazing thing was seeing how everyone in St Andrews has something to add to the team, everyone is unique and has brought their own value to the team, its been so dope. Even Theo, running around town in a taco costume for a video, no one else could have done that.

“This is what we wanted to project to feel like all along. This is not just our start-up, this is a community start-up. We want everyone to be involved.”

Lila: I saw that on your Instagram, that was so funny.

Eric: That’s another thing; we want to keep our Instagram really light and fun and relatable.

Seb: We want this to be a student project. This isn’t some high-end, untouchable service. We’re students, for students. We want everyone to feel like they know us and then they know the vision.

Lila: Do you guys hope to continue working with Latinflow? Did you enjoy collaborating with them? 

Seb: Absolutely. They have the same mission as us in trying to elevate the Latin culture in St Andrews.

Eric: I mean, if we were to do that event on our own, we wouldn’t have had the same response. The community that Latinflow has built enabled us to get more hype, and Lo’s Tacos being there was also a big bonus for them.

Lila: I feel like it was a really smart collaboration.

Eric: Pablo is a really hard worker as well. He’s super talented creatively, organisationally. He was great to work with.

Lila: Are there any other societies, clubs, events that you guys want to collaborate with in St Andrews?

Eric: We want to collaborate with as many people as we can and create more relationships like the one we have with Latinflow.

Seb: We have a super dynamic and diverse team as well, with a lot of people involved in loads of different societies around campus which has helped us with getting the name out there. In St Andrews, there's a million different student led initiatives, right? I think, when they come together, that’s when you where you can generate a lot of support and build, and I think that really special. We are going to keep focussing on executing our product, its quality, and making and maintaining relationships with people.

Eric: And feed some people!

Lila: I feel like you guys are expanding really fast.

Eric: It’s a sigh of relief. Its happening. Putting the amount of hours you do into it, it can get tiring and it can be a lot of effort. But I’m really enjoying it. It’s a satisfying feeling that it is all coming together. We have created a base, we have our first event under our belt, and now it’s time for us to keep expanding. We are taking it one step at a time and focussing on our product being good.

Seb: We are also learning so much. None of us have really started our own business or society before. As we go, as the team gets bigger, we start learning how to communicate as things get more complicated logistically. We have to have more inventory and we have to scale up, and we learn new things with each step. Even at our first tasting, we was getting down the measurements for how many greens we needed to make X amount of tacos in preparation for our first delivery of dinners. We started figuring out what works, what doesn’t, what feedback we were receiving. What do our customers like and trying to make everyone on our team happy. These are all building blocks along the way to be able to scale. You can't just go from a first tasting to a thousand-person event. And I think we have been scaling well. We haven’t been skipping any steps. You know, we've started with small dinners. We did the first event with the St. Andrews Africa summit for a hundred people. Now its 250 people. And so now we're really starting to build up and starting to find an infrastructure that works and is sustainable as well as trying to make sure that everyone on the team has that shared vision and mission and are reliable.

Eric: Everyone on the team is really aligned in the vision and are investing so much time and effort into this.

Lila: What do you guys envision for the future of Lo’s Tacos?

Seb: The way we can really make the most impact is through the big events. One of our main goals is to become a staple at these events, such as the balls and fashion shows.

Eric: A great goal of ours is to have a truck, or own fully branded, physical thing that will be at all the events. It would be efficient for us, and it would be known by everyone as the Lo’s Tacos truck. I think that would be a great feature for the brand and business. 

Seb: But these are just ideas. We are taking it event by event. We would have to figure out if the costs are realistic.

Lila: That’s all the questions I have for you guys. Thank you so much for meeting with me, Lo’s Tacos is delicious, and I can’t wait to see you guys at more events in the future.

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