We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Don Jante. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Don below.

Don, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of our favorite things to brainstorm about with friends who’ve built something entrepreneurial is what they would do differently if they were to start over today. Surely, there are things you’ve learned that would allow you to do it over faster, more efficiently. We’d love to hear how you would go about setting things up if you were starting over today, knowing everything that you already know.

If I were to start over today, I would do everything cash based. I would not borrow money from people and/or use credit cards.

I should of saved up way more money, learned about business a lot more and work my tail off to succeed.

Don, 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?

My name is Don Jante who started as a Graphic Designer turned into restauranteur from our garage. I’ve always wanted to start a family business, but never knew what to start. One day, my auntie Myrna taught me how to make a steamed bun, siopao. She also shared different recipes like lumpia and empanadas. We ran with it and came up with the idea of sharing family recipes with the people. We started making these items in our homes and started selling them to family and friends. Soon after we came up the idea of bridging the gap between Filipino and Americans with Filipino inspired burgers. With this idea we created a Filipino-American Burger Style Food Truck, Flip ’n Patties. One of the big hits, funny enough wasn’t even a burger, but a family dish called chicken PuPu..

With a Catholic Christian heart, we wanted more than to just serve family recipes, but to hopefully add value to the community. Sharing profits were in our plans, but we unfortunately never made any profits on the food truck. We had to shift and start working different events and supporting different organizations. Donating a percentage of sales or donating food to organizations were ways that we could assist different communities. Even feeding the homeless who visited the food truck was a mission for us.

Purpose driven restaurant is who we are. We try to do everything with purpose. From the ingredients we use to the paper goods, it all has a purpose. We try to use clean meats, no preservatives, hormone and additives. Our paper goods are either recycled and/or biodegradable. The learning curve is to try to read past the marketing lingo and try to educated ourselves on different products so we can use the most friendly to Mother Earth. It’s continuing to learn and adapt, because sometimes things aren’t as sustainable as they are marketed. As long as we keep learning and growing, I believe we will get there, to be a 100% sustainable restaurant that has the least impact on hurting Mother Earth.

We’re trying to bring happiness to peoples hearts by sharing Filipino flavors and culture.

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

Pivot was the word of Covid. We had to pivot real quick to try to keep everyone employed. We had to create a take out menu on the fly and deliver to anywhere in Houston just to keep the doors open.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

I was a horrible leader starting out. I had to learn how to lead a team correctly which is pulling the team and supporting the team and loving the team. People will always hold on to the bad rather than good. I try to stay at a high energy so if we have a low energy team member, we try to pick them up. We look at people as an individual and not the bottom line on a P&L. Servant Leadership to lead for the benefit and unlock the potential of others.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.flipnpatties.com
• Instagram: flipnpatties
• Facebook: flipnpatties
• Twitter: flipnpatties
• Youtube: flipnpatties
• Yelp: Flip ‘n Patties Eldridge
• Other: TikTok: Flipnpatties

Image Credits
Don Jante, Blue Bandit