We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Eduardo Chavez Jr. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Eduardo below.
Eduardo, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?
It’s funny you mention this, I was just having this conversation a few days ago. How most people, want the title or the final destination, a huge thriving business. But fail to look at the in between. People see a successful business or a successful entrepreneur and want that. They want the successful business, or be a success themselves.
They are attached to the end goal. Until it’s time to get to work. Once they find out how much work it actually is, quitting or switching endeavors is the easiest thing to do for them.
Scaling, happens to be my favorite part of being a business owner.
It’s a challenge, to see how big we can get it to be and to see how much we are willing to do. How much blood sweat & tears are we will to put in to it.
I remember when we first started, $50 days. We’ll be happy with 5/10 customers walking in.
Then we’ll say, one day it’ll be $100 days!
2 years of consistent work, day in day out we got to $100 days!
And from there, the rest is history.
7 years of business now.
Adding locations yearly & serving hundreds of customers daily!
Scaling now means even more than it use to.
When it comes to scaling, every single detail is just as important.
Quality, customer service, wait times, employees, management, marketing, exploring new locations, innovating & the list goes on.
Scaling in my opinion is an every day process, you have to be almost perfect in every move, so you’re always “scaling” always improving and getting better & bigger.
It makes the process of scaling natural.
Constant growth daily on the business and on yourself is the thriving formula for scaling,
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I was very fortunate to see first hand the entrepreneur lifestyle at a very young age because of my father has been an entrepreneur my whole life. I remember watching him start a business, master it, and do it all over again. Teaching a valuable lesson along the way, master your craft. At the age of 19, I was introduced to a Travel Club, giving me an opportunity to start a low cost upfront business. There, I met hundreds of very successful entrepreneurs. They coached my girlfriend and I personally for about 5 years. Those years were extremely valuable for us. Teaching us once again, the importance of mastering and giving 110% effort into whatever you’re doing.
While all this is going on, here goes my father again, starting another business. This time Fruteria Chavez was born.
I would go and help out every now and then, while most of my attention was on running my travel club.
The more time I would spend at the business, Fruteria Chavez, the more I realize that it was a HIT. It was different, it had culture.
I started to get involved more and more. I would come in and just kind of take over without asking, Running the business, managing employees, handling costumers, inventory and everything that comes with being a business owner.
I fell in LOVE. I fell in love with a traditional brick and motar business. I fell in love with being able to control a business, rather than relaying on looking for costumers to buy something from me and wishing other people would have the same work ethic as me, as that was the issue in my Travel Club business.
My father saw the value I brought to the business. He saw first hand the business explode once we got involved. All the teaching and learning we learned in those 5 years of being around highly successful individuals, we brought to the business.
He trusted in me, I kinda just took over the “manager” position for a few years. My father trusted in me and what i was doing. Fast forward now, I am now a full owner. Multiple locations, and adding new ones very year.
We at Fruteria Chavez, have changed and impacted the fruteria business model. We offer Real Traditional Mexican snacks. Not just a snack shop, but a business that offers culture. A business that is an experience to just come in. A costumer walks in to bright colors, spanish music playing, mexican fiesta banderas running through the whole ceiling. And the cherry on top, a beautiful to the eye, tasty to the mouth, delicious and authentic Mexican favorite snack. WE bring Mexico to you.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
COVID! In all honesty, thank you Covid. Just like every other business out here, one day you’re forced to close your doors. No costumers inside, lockdown… etc. Well what do you do?
Champions adjust! We had to create a “To-Go Window” overnight. One day you’re open, next day you’re functioning out a window. New inventory and a whole new system we had to get used to, and get used to fast. Packaging everything to go. Delivering all orders curbside and the list goes on. Thanks to all our loyal costumers & new costumers that came during the pandemic time, we were able to maintain and exceed.
Thanks to covid, we had a breakthrough year. Despite everything going on in the world at the time, Fruteria Chavez was flourishing like never before.
We gained thousands of new costumers and by the end of it all, we had such a beautiful system in place.
Keep pushing, keep innovating, keep fighting.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Quality, customer service, consistency, efficiency, innovation, adapting & resilience. You master those, I promise anyone can have a successful thriving business. But don’t forget, the most important, will power. IF someone doesn’t get up and get to work, long days, long hours, sweat blood tears, they wont make it. Your business depends on you. Once your start. After you master those first strategies I suggested, you’d have a successful running business, running on its on.
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