We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alden & Hylene Garcia a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alden & Hylene, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

Alden’s parents have ran a successful business for 15 years and they are certainly an inspiration as to how to make it work. While working with your partner can be difficult at times, it is also super fulfilling knowing that we have built our business together for our future family. We hope to have children one day who will decide to work with us or do their own thing. Either way, we feel like we are building a new legacy within our family tree.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We have both work in the restaurant industry since we were teenagers. During the covid lockdown we decided we wanted to do something of our own. We opened up a little food truck that highlights Mexican-American flavors in a fast food style menu. We offer a variety of unique snacks, smash burgers and sides. We are currently working in a complimentary concept to go along with our savory options that we’re very excited to share with our community really soon!
What sets us apart in our industry is our attention to quality and detail while also highlighting flavors from our roots.
We’re most proud that we started our business as a young couple on our own and now have four employees and a loyal fan base.

Have you ever had to pivot?

We’re currently in a pivotal point in our business. We have been operating at a brewery downtown for the last 2.5 years. Inconsistent parking availability and code enforcement from our city has pushed us towards leasing our own space. We will soon be parking our truck on private property in the downtown Pensacola area but while we wait on construction we are definitely in a state of limbo. We are trying to make things work but needless to say, it has a been a challenge.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We have worked hard since the beginning to focus on social media. We think we have a good sense of how to post on social media because we have been using it since we were teenagers. We don’t have a marketing degree but we focus on making our brand as nice and polished as possible. We believe that adding our personal voice on our social media has made a huge impact on customer reception. If you’re in the food industry, take pictures of your food! Find a good balance between selling your product and selling yourself. It’s super important! Also, don’t post just to post. Make sure that what you are posting has value and not just a filler post because you “need” to post. Quality over quantity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://WWW.MISUSTREETFOOD.COM
• Instagram: @MISU_STREETFOOD
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/misustreetfood/

Image Credits

ART WORK BY POPPY GARCIA