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

Caroline , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

I co-own and co-founded our company- Chef Mercado’s Kitchen with my Dad. I was 17 when we launched our company and over the last 6 years having my family as a support system and my dad as a co-owner has been crucial in thriving as an entrepreneur. My dad is an entrepreneur with a background in accounting and finance who has built several businesses over his life because of everything I have learned from him, I definitely feel that asking for the guidance of a family member who has more experience than yourself can be extremely beneficial, not only do you have the opportunity to grow and learn from their prior experiences but they are someone who can help you overcome possible hurdles, create new ideas and help you achieve your goals. The foundation to our success has been, having a clear vision, shared responsibilities and an open line of communication. Some of the main lessons I learned have been, flexibility and having an open mind, for example, taking others opinions and ideas into account and implementing them in different ways. Gleaning from the experience of my past mistakes has helped me become better at what I do. I love and feel very lucky to be able to create alongside my family and hope to continue to do so for many years to come.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My family and I went vegan in 2015 after my mom was experiencing some health issues. She wanted to take a holistic, whole foods approach to healing and decided to go raw vegan for three months. About two weeks into her journey we watched a documentary that was gifted to us by her holistic doctor, we were mid-ground turkey dinner and halfway through the documentary when we decided to cut out all animal products for good. Because we were not very informed on eating vegan and proper substitutions for certain foods, it became my mission to create from scratch, flavor rich vegan versions of all our favorite foods and baked goods! I love making everything from fully raw meals and fresh juices to cakes and fried vegan yeast doughnuts as I believe healthy eating and sweet treats do not have to be mutually exclusive but are all part of a healthy and balanced lifestyle. We offer a wide range of services from catering to meal prepping to wedding cakes and daily cravings. I hope when you order from us, you find food and pastries that fuel your vegan journey or encourage you to try more vegan meals!

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

Around 2016- about a year after we went vegan, I decided to try to make vegan doughnuts as they were very difficult to find DFW at the time. I started experimenting with recipes and after about a year of developing, I finally had a recipe that I really enjoyed. Around the same time, I had also opened a Facebook recipe page and had following of people who enjoyed trying my recipes. After I had finally gotten my doughnut recipe right I asked my family taste test them and they really loved them! Because my family knew how much I loved cooking and how I really wanted to get into the creative cooking space, my dad had the idea that I start offering my donuts to friends, facebook followers and selling at local events. I started collaborating with local vegan social media creators and doing pop-ups at vegan restaurants in the area, within about eight months, it became my full time career. After about a year and a half I started expanding what we offered for example, releasing holiday menus, offering birthday cakes and doing small meals for a groups of about 4 to 6 people. As time went on, we expanded and now offer full service catering, wedding cakes, vegan meal prepping and so much more.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

For us social media, doing local pop-ups, word-of-mouth from returning customers and offering seasonal menus have all helped us maintain and build our business. Offering treats that are specific to popular new movies and current trends can help bring in new customers. Creating cakes and food with seasonal flavors as well as consistent social media posting are all important parts of building up a strong community.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chefmercadoskitchen.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chefmercadoskitchen?igsh=M3NkeTdqNHVpMWg2

Image Credits

No other info :)