We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carmen Yip a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Carmen, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Everything started with the COVID lockdown. We were living in NYC and decided to go to Virginia for what it was supposed to be only a few months. Being in Virginia is very different than being in NYC, back there you can find Venezuelan food pretty much everywhere, that wasn’t the case in Virginia. During the few weeks we were in lockdown in NYC we ordered Venezuelan food for take pretty much everyday, specially tequeños; there was only one problem, they never tasted like the ones I used to eat back in Venezuela.

While being in Virginia, still in lockdown, there wasn’t much to do so I decided to try and recreate the tequeños that I grew up eating and loved so much. It took me a few tries, I won’t lie, I did some research and spoke to almost every single member of my family trying to combine recipes.

After like 2 weeks trying tequeños, I finally got the perfect recipe. I was so excited, I gave tequeños to everybody in the house (my husband family) and they absolutely loved them. I was in shock because they have never tried it before, they didn’t even know tequeños existed. And so they started to ask for more tequeños, and more, and more. They gave tequeños to friends and neighbors, and they started to ask for it too.

One night, my husband came to me and propose to start selling tequeños to those who really like them. Nothing really fancy or serious, just to friends and neighbors, I thought it was a really good idea. And so we started to sell them, and then their friends wanted tequeño too, and so go on.

Talking to a friend, he mentioned the idea of going to farmers markets, and that was the thing that actually got us into creating the Tequeño World that everybody knows now. The first few weeks wasn’t great, but slowly people started to know tequeños and Venezuelan food in general and the support of our community grew unexpectedly. We started to get caterings, big orders, small orders, 4 and 5 times a week. The amount of work we were putting into Tequeño World was big and that led us to opening our own store.

You can say that Tequeño World only exists because of the support of our families and our community, and we are eternally grateful for that.

Carmen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a Venezuelan girl living in Virginia. I was born and raised in Venezuela and moved here a few years ago with my family in the search of a better and brighter future. I know I’m a very lucky girl because after a lot of hard work I can say that my dreams are coming true.

Tequeño World is a Venezuelan restaurant that focuses in bringing the most authentic cuisine from the center of Venezuela, specially the one from my city Valencia, Carabobo. I think this is very special because even though you can find many places that sell Venezuelan food there aren’t many that sell the food from the center of the country, and I think that’s what difference us from the rest.

We offer a variety of food from arepas, cachacas, empanadas, bowls to 3 leches, chicha and churros… But our specialty and what we are known for are our tequeños. Tequeños, for those who might not know them, are like finger food, we called it the pastry cheese stick. Basically you have a cheese stick (we use our own queso blanco) and you wrapped it around a flour base dough that when fried becomes crispy and flaky (similar to a phyllo dough in texture).

We open our store everyday and we craft our tequeños by hand every single morning, so you will always find them fresh. We offer counter service, but you can also find us on every major delivery platform. We also provide catering services as well as wholesale services. And because everything started when we went to a Farmers market, we also attend them all year long… We like to stick to our roots.

I believe that food feeds the soul, and when you do it with love and with quality products you can brighten the day of anyone who’s eating it… And that’s our main goal.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Ugh, so many! Starting a new business with so little experiences was terrifying. My husband and I worked in restaurants but the perspective is wildly different. We adventured ourselves into getting a Brick and Mortar business thinking that we knew it all after working years in restaurants, but the true is that nothing can prepare you completely when owning a business.

We opened right after lockdown, but there was still some restrictions in place that made everything harder for us. At first we couldn’t find any help and so we were working 7 days every week with shifts of 12 and 14 hours. We were exhausted and ask ourselves many times why were we doing it.

We also opened the restaurant with life savings and family loans, and so money was tight at first. We couldn’t afford to fix one broken pipe, or to get uniforms, or to pay one extra employee. So again we found ourselves working endlessly.

I remember one time one of the sewers was clogged. We called the contractor and surprise! We needed to replace the whole sewer system, install a new tank and to do so we need to move electricity and more. It was so expensive and we could barely pay 1 employee at the time. We use all of our credit cards and even had to work delivering food to make the money. Thank god we were able to fix it and pay all debts, but that one was a close one.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

As a former restaurant worker I know how bad can employees be treated by superiors, so we both (my husband and I) swear to never be like that. Because of that at the begging it was difficult for us to establish a line between being an employee and being the boss… Because you can relate them.

We didn’t had much experiences as managers much less as business owners so we were doing everything as equals, we would cut and clean alongside our employees. But when you do that your taking time that you need to use as manager/owner, that no one else can help you do it because there no else above you.

We needed to change that, and we needed to learn how to be a good boss to your employees but also be a good boss to your business. And that is very hard for inexperience business owners.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tequenoworld.com
• Instagram: @tequenoworld
• Facebook: @tequenoworld
• Yelp: Tequeno World
• Other: TikTok: @tequenoworld

Image Credits
Photographer: Mariluz Yip