We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Arlenne Escamilla teran. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Arlenne below.
Arlenne, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
My name is Arlenne, I’m an immigrant originally from Mexico, I was born in Oaxaca and the moved to the US with my family at the age of 10 years old, the move was rather more difficult than I thought, I had to learn a new language and adapt to a new lifestyle, my family did not come from money, both of my parents always struggled, I see that now, something I did not notice was I was younger but they both worked hard most times two jobs at a time to make ends meet yet they did they best they could to provide for my brother and me. When I got older this is something it was embedded in my mind, you have to work hard to succeed, and while I was not able to attend to a four year college, i could never afford it, I did work and saved every penny I had and went community college and graduated as certified dental assistant, and worked as pediatric dental assistant for 8 years before my big opportunity came by then I was happily married to my partner and father of my daughter Tony.
We were home-owners since 2017 of our first home, a lovely house we called home for at least 4 years and we both worked really hard day to day, me as assistant, he is auto mechanic, but we always talked about how we wanted more, not so much not work anymore but with a purpose, and start our own business, this is when it happened, the big boom of house market came up where houses were selling left and right and at incredible prices, that’s when our idea came up, why not sell our house and use that money to start a business, we’ve never had a huge life savings so this looked like the perfect opportunity to have it and use it, and that’s what we did, we took the risk, we put our house in the market, it was sold in a few days at a very nice price and our dream started.
We started looking into community help to help us get started, we decided to open our own restaurant, mind you we did not come from the food industry but we both loved to cook and food, specifically we love Argentinian/ Uruguayan food where my husband is originally from, where we live, there is not much diversity, there’s your usual chains and a few latin American restaurants (mostly Mexican) so we thought we could be pioneers and open the first Argentinian restaurant in Wisconsin, the closest restaurant would be in Chicago (an hour and half away) and that’s how kind of all started we took a big chance on something new and while there has been many challenges and I’m sure more will come up I don’t regret starting my own business because there is nothing like taking on something new and making it your own, and what doesn’t work you learn and move on and more importantly I never have to wonder what if?
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got into this business as a leap of faith and as I had previously mentioned while taking a risk, I am a pediatric dental assistant by trade, currently going on 9 years practicing, and I loved it, I loved working with kids, taking them from being super afraid when they come in to a fun experience where they leave with a smile on their face and eager to come back, I see that with my customers who come to my restaurant today, while they’re not visible upset or afraid I can always tell when they have no idea what to order or what our plates look like, I take the time o explain to them in details what our plates look like sometime my fiancé even go to explain why something is called the way it is for example we have a traditional dessert from Uruguay which I learned many years how to prepare and it’s my favorite therefore I always recommend it to my customer it’s called “Chaja” it’s a layered cake with Dulce de leche, peaches, sweet cream and meringue cookies, i know it sounds like a lot but it’s not it’s sweet without being overwhelming and its texture it’s light, it was named under the same name as bird that looks physically big and fluffy but underneath it’s thin and light and my customer tend to love the story and therefore they love the cake. I like showing people there is more than what is usually out there, our cuisine is simple but there’s a comfort and warmth to it that makes delicious, and to see the looks on their face when they taste something they never have before or at least not all the ingredients combined like we do, we serve from anything you can think of Argentina has traditionally.
This is what our brand is all about not just about serving food but giving an experience, while you’re stting in my restaurant you’re gonna listen to tango, have tradtional baked Empanadas, Asado, Alfajores and sip on some Mate (South American tea) accompanied by delicious facturas (Argentinean pastries) and feel like you are visiting Argetina without having to jump on a plane.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
The best source of clients has been word of mouth, I’ve done a little bit of everything from social media to t.v. commercials and more recently movie theater ads but usually most customer come in when they hear from someone else about us, and regular customer who come back every time and bring new people with them while we obviously had to put in the work for them to leave as happy customers, a combination of it all is what has worked for us.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
when I opened my restaurant in June of 2022, my partner and I decided it was for the best for me to continued working part-time as a dental assistant and he would take over taking care of the restaurant full-time, we had invested all of our life saving into it and starting a new business has its challenges for one it’s not profitable right away and we had a family to take care of so I did, I worked during the week at children’s dental clinic and during the weekends at the restaurant that is until we realized how hard it was to find responsible staff or just staff in general, there was a crisis of shortage of employees and people will applying but not staying or wouldn’t even show up at a interview so at one point we had to make another decision this was maybe about six or seven months after we had opened, I had to leave my back up job and while the restaurant was still not profitable enough, we managed to organize our finances and I was able to quit my regular job, like I said it has not been easy and we are not financially stable, not even close but I can say we have enough to continue working towards more and be succesful.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.elgauchogrillbrookfield.com
- Instagram: elgauchogrillbf
- Facebook: elgauchogrillbrookfieldpage
- Yelp: el-gaucho-grill-brookfield-4
Image Credits
spothoper