Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Giselle Gallardo & Nick Machado. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Giselle & Nick, appreciate you joining us today. Almost all entrepreneurs have had to decide whether to start now or later? There are always pros and cons to waiting and so we’d love to hear what you think about your decision in retrospect. If you could go back in time, would you have started your business sooner, later or at the exact time you started?

We launched our small business in June of 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. At the time, we were worried that this idea wouldn’t go anywhere but we were excited to dedicate our spare time (thanks to the pandemic) to building something from the ground up. Although launching during such an unprecedented time did come with some challenges, we didn’t notice that the timing was actually perfect. Looking back to when we first started our business we now realize that our boards were a little escape from reality for many. During this time there weren’t many things people could do, everyone was cooped up at home because everything was shut down. Our boards let people break their routines and try something new. We could see the excitement on customers’ faces when they received their boards. Believe it or not, cheese really makes people cheese! Seeing those smiles was very rewarding and inspired us to keep this going and provide the community with something they can gather around and enjoy with their loved ones. With that being said, no we would have not wanted to start sooner or later – the timing was perfect!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

We are high school sweethearts, who quickly realized that we both have a love for entertaining and crowd-pleasing. Whenever we had guests over, we usually would put together a charcuterie board as an appetizer. Soon enough, our charcuterie boards became a must-have at every gathering. Our friends and family encouraged us to start a business, and after some thought, we decided to go for it and share our delicious boards with our favorite city.

Both being born and raised in Miami, we are pretty much obsessed with the culture here. We decided that Miami’s culture would be the foundation of our brand. From the name of our business to the names of our menu items, we made sure to incorporate some 305 flavor wherever we could. We want our customers to have a connection with our brand and get a kick out of our creativity along the way. Incorporating common phrases and Miami slang combined with 305 food staples is a great way to connect with our community and combine our love for this city with our business.

Nick is the mastermind behind the boards. He has curated our signature cheese and meat pairings. He was part of the culinary team in high school and proceeded to follow his love for the kitchen by attending The Culinary Institute of America in NY. Like a true Miami boy, he decided to come back home and continue his culinary endeavors working at Barton G. in South Beach. After a few years in the industry, he decided his love for cooking was more of a hobby and finished a degree in business at FIU. Although he has never fully abandoned the kitchen, he loves being able to use his skills to make people’s gatherings extra special. Giselle is the brains behind the business. She handles orders, billing, and marketing. Giselle discovered her love for startups after competing in a business competition during her freshman year of high school. She then participated in a similar competition focusing on restaurant management that led her to become involved as the Team Manager for her school’s culinary team – where she met Nick. Being the team manager, Giselle was introduced to the world of hospitality, where she participated in caterings and other events. Giselle decided to fuel her passion for business at FIU. She loves providing that picture-perfect touch that every event needs.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Building our audience on social media is something we are still working to grow. We have been able to get to where we are now slowly and organically, but the sky is the limit here. Luckily, we have great engagement with our followers, which helps build excitement for when we launch new menu items. As a young business, we have dedicated focus on organic growth and building partnerships with the community. Upon launching we leaned on our friends and family to be our biggest cheerleaders. They would like, repost, share, and shout us out all the time. We really think this was an essential part in building an audience because it also helped generate word of mouth. Some of our most loyal clients are those that heard about us in the very beginning. Some of the initiatives that we attribute to having helped us grow have been strategic giveaways, collaborating with other small businesses, food bloggers, and sponsoring small networking events. In addition, local features like these have been a huge help in growing our audience. The best advice we’ve ever gotten was to reach out to local ‘talent’ for new launches – you never know who might be interested and would want to write a story on your business!

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

One of our favorite marking/sales moments was back in March when we participated in our first big pop-up event. This was a very exciting opportunity for us to meet other vendors and engage with the community in person! We considered this to be more of a marketing initiative with an opportunity for sales. We invested a lot of timing in designing how we wanted our booth to look, coming up with ways to attract people to come by and engage with our brand even if they were not buying one of our small snack boards on the spot. Apart from the display portion of the booth we also had to prepare and transport snack boards and other menu items we were selling. Since this was our first pop-up of this kind, we had a hard time gauging the quantity of food needed for the event. Overall preparing for this event took a lot of time and we were worried that it may have not been worth it. It was a very long day since this is something we were not used to, but ultimately it was a lot of fun and worth it! We got to meet a few customers who had ordered from us before and made great connections with local vendors and even got to meet some local talent. This experience showed us how important it is to step out of our comfort zone – even if it means putting day-to-day projects on the back burner and juggling unfamiliar responsibilities and risks! You never know who you may build a connection with, and all it takes sometimes is one connection.

Contact Info:

• Website: papicarmiami.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/papicarmiami/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/papicarmiami
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pa-picar-miami-llc
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/papicarmiami
• Youtube: N/A
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/pa-picar-miami-miami?osq=pa+picar