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

Carolyn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

I think I am a very happy business owner. I have flexibility with my schedule far more than I would as an employee, I get to work with an amazing team every day, I am able to be proactive with issues that arise and take actual steps to fix problems. I love being able to work everyday at something I truly love.

There are days where I wish I had a normal job. Being a business owner, there are no real days off and there are constant fires to put out. You don’t clock in and out each day. You and your partners are responsible for a staff and the success and health of your business. It can of course be a lot of pressure.

The last time I felt very happy to own my own business was last week. Both of our young children (I own a restaurant with my husband and our children are 5 and 6) had off of school for the whole week. I was able to take them to the restaurant to help me out and then work from home the rest of the time. If we did not own the restaurant, having two children in the service industry would be very difficult. We feel incredibly lucky to be able to have a family and a business.

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 husband and I own Californios. It is a fine dining Mexican restaurant in San Francisco serving a nightly tasting menu. We opened in 2014 in the Mission and moved to a larger space in 2020 after the pandemic hit and we needed a space with a patio that suited our needs.

I was working in the interior design field before we opened the restaurant. My husband was a chef and we decided that the only way to fulfill both of our dreams was to open our own restaurant. I designed the interior and he runs the kitchen.

We opened in a tiny 24 seat restaurant with only 7 of us total working front and back of house. We all worked 12 plus hour days and fought so hard to prove ourselves. In 2015 we were awarded our first Michelin star followed by the second in 2017. We are the first Mexican restaurant in the world to receive 2 stars. We were given 4 stars by the chronicle and continue to push every single day to be a better version of ourselves.

I am incredibly proud of us and our team and what we have accomplished this far. We have become a restaurant where people come to celebrate their biggest life moments which is such an honor and our team and diners have become our family.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

During the pandemic we were forced to close. We had to cancel and refund upwards of a hundred thousand dollars in refunds. We closed our doors completely and kept our staff on as long as we could. We honored the shelter in place for every closure and ultimately sold our original location as a result. The cost of building a parklet in a neighborhood that was not suited for outdoor dining and the dim financial prospect of take out that would not even allow us to break even made no sense. We sat tight and did not take any pay for months. The bank account dropped scarily low and we had to make the decision to sell and move on or sell and reopen. We decided to give a new location a shot. One with a beautiful private patio where we could feel proud to continue the experience we provided at the old space. This was incredibly scary. We had no money and had fully self funded the first space. We had to take a huge risk and hope that we could find investors. We decided to work in stages and remodel as we could. Reopening in the pandemic was a daily nightmare. Guests would and still do cancel last second due to covid, staff would get covid and we would have to close and cancel on our guests. It has been a very long and scary road back.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met my business partner Val in high school. We were high school sweethearts! We actually both went to culinary school together and moved out to San Francisco from Texas to follow our dreams.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.Californiossf.com
• Instagram: Californiossf

Image Credits
Adahlia Cole Carolyn Cantu (only the photo of kids)