We were lucky to catch up with Abel Benitez recently and have shared our conversation below.

Abel , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you have any advice regarding quality control and maintaining quality as your brand grows?

As a business owner I can tell you that it is very hard to make a decision based on increasing food prices. We try to maintain our food prices low and that the food quality is excellent. Thank goodness that Rolling Fried is growing day by day. We are very grateful for all of our loyal customers. That keeps coming back. Without them we couldn’t keep doing this anymore. So in return we are always thinking how can we make it work for everyone. So we started a loyalty program. We give every customer a card with a stamp for every Roll/ Rolling Burger they buy. And on the 10th they will receive a free roll. This way it helps us keep bringing our customers back and our way to show them how we appreciate them. My advice to you is to keep doing what you’re passionate about. Don’t let anything stop you. And trust in yourself.

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 back background and context?

On April 2021 I was going thru a rough time the pandemic had just started. My job had to closed because of Covid. My wife and I decided to take a risk and to start a business. I had been working over 20 years at a Japanese restaurant as a General Manager. My son told me about a location in Lincoln Heights that there was vendors coming together and why not start there. But I had to think about what product will I offer. So that day I decided to try Teriyaki chicken. So the next day I went to buy the food products, generator, lights, tables everything I needed to start my own business. Yes we were scared that this will be an expense that maybe it wouldn’t work out. And scared to loose. But we had to try it that night we opened from 5pm til midnight. Things didn’t go well. We had only sold two plates that whole night. But we saw other vendors doing well and my wife and I thought what do we need or what can i change to get customers to try our products. So I decided on Sushi rolls but the question was how can future customers buy sushi rolls without being scared to eat it. So we came up with Fried sushi rolls. Literally we only started with three item on our menu. Fried California Roll, Fried Shrimp Roll, and a side of Shrimp tempura. So we decided to go with it the next day. What can I tell it was a hit. We started selling more and more. Everything was going well until the the City shut the Alley. We unfortunately lost mostly of our clients because we were barely working on our Instagram page and we didn’t have enough time to get them to follow us. Because of that life lesson we learned how IG or any other social media it does helps us keep our customers to be informed on our weekly schedule. So now we do ask our customers to follow us and we give them a loyalty card. On one side You will find our contact information and instagram page and on the other side it’s a loyalty card for every roll customers buy from us we will stamp it and on the 10th you will receive one free roll. We encourage you to follow us @rolling_fried and come out and try us.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think what helped build my reputation in market is that we are a vendor that is consistently working hard. We try not to miss out any of our regular events. Sometimes it’s is very hard to make decisions where we have been called to be at an event and most of the time we have already been booked ahead of time. It’s hard to say we can’t do it. If we had the employees we will be happier to attend every single one. But what I have learned is that everything happens for a reason. This Year we have had three pop up events in a day. And we are grateful for the success of every event. But sometimes we can’t schedule it and we decide for our regular pop up because we have a lot of weekly customers that has become loyal customers. And we try not to let them down. It’s hard to keep a good reputation and make hard decisions.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

I have not yet made my small business in a main or full time business. But I hope that for 2024 we will. We are still working very hard to make this happen my wife and I still have a permanent job. And we work for our business on the weekends. If your asking how do we do this for now almost 3 years I can sure tell you yes it’s hard to work during the weekend even and go back to your regular job on Monday. Yes it’s hard to work Wednesday Morning and prep for the evening pop up. And then go work the next morning at my regular job. And on the side having a personal life. But I have learned that if we really want to make this small business and make to something big we have to work harder. This is my motivation I love to talk to all my customers and seeing those regular customers is important to us. Because we appreciate everyone’s time that comes to us.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Rolling_fried