We recently connected with Esra England and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Esra thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

One of the most important values that I believe my parents (Mother and Grandmother) instilled in me is a hard working ethic which values characteristics like resilience, commitment, and overall hard work. They always encouraged me to try new things but to stick with them long enough to know if I have an actual interest before wanting to give up and move on to something else.

Up until high school I was encouraged to study music theory and learned to play the piano and guitar at a decent level. As a youngster I absolutely hated putting in so much time practicing while all my friends were able to play outside. I quite often told my parents that I wanted to quit, but as I grew older it became more interesting to my peers that I was able to play various instruments as well as perform in different talent shows and musical groups growing up. It taught me a lot about dedicating yourself to put in the time and work to practice mastering the task. If you work hard at something you eventually have to get better at it…and if you don’t over an extended period of time then it’s possibly not your task to master.

Esra, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Israel “Esra” England and I moved to Kansas City roughly 10 years ago from Jackson, MS for a contracted job in the healthcare field. After living in KC for a couple of years I began to miss the Creole style food that I was accustomed to eating back home in the Southern Bayou. I always had a passion for cooking ever since a young age (my two favorite channels growing up were Nickelodeon and Food Network) so I decided to take some introductory culinary classes to see if cooking would be something that I could possibly make a living from.

Shortly after completing some culinary courses, I took some money that I had saved up and invested in starting a Cajun themed food truck in 2017 under the name KC Cajun. We are Kansas City’s voted best Cajun food truck and restaurant in the KC Metro (2018 Pitch Best of KC- Cajun Food #3 Overall) offering some of the best Cajun food this side of the Mississippi River. We pride ourselves on recipes mastered by generations of Creole chefs and cooks. We offer master recipes of Cajun cuisine in a setting that pairs quick convenience with reasonably priced high quality dining. At our establishments we offer classic traditional Cajun dishes such as Gumbo, Boudin, and Jambalaya as well as our fusion cuisine such Cajun Pizza, KC Fry, Cajun Pasta. We offer a blend of traditional Cajun cuisine with fusion Midwest comfort food.

We value our customer’s overall experience (music, art, food) when you come to KC Cajun, you are guaranteed to get wonderful food as well as experience some of the great Jazz, and culture of the New Orleans city. We want our customers to get more out of a dining experience at our establishments, we want you to feel as though you are actually at the Mardi Gras parade with a warm cup of Gumbo and a Beignets for dessert!!!

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Yes we manufacture our in house seasoning line that consists of a Cajun, Lemon Pepper and Chicken seasoning. Coming from a food truck background we understood the importance of maximizing your space to be efficient as well as highly productive. Once we obtained our brick and mortar (2022) we wanted to maximize our revenue opportunities by having a nearly 24 hour operational schedule. We run the restaurant during normal business hours, and once the restaurant closes another shift/team comes in to start on bottling our seasonings for a shift and by the time they complete their shift the restaurant morning shift is coming in to open for the morning. It’s highly efficient and allows us to keep our staff with hours/income as well as allow us to be very productive. We are actually working on bringing in our hand squeezed lemonade to begin being bottled in the location as well.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

My formal background started out working in corporate in the healthcare industry. My job title a few years after completing college (Michigan State University) was an Ancillary Testing Laboratory Supervisor and I began to experience fatigue from working in the field.

One of the difficulties of working in the field was overcoming the feeling that you were not valued and that the vast number of people relying on a broken system (medical debt, medication costs, etc) started making me feel like I was helping the problem grow by simply trying to make a living.

After quitting my job in August of 2019 (months before Covid) to work for KC Cajun full time I realized that I had to stay focused mentally in order to first convenience myself to quit my job (+ six figures) to go to making less than minimum wage. It allowed me the opportunity to realize that money doesn’t always make you happy, sometimes it’s truly a matter of following your heart!!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kansascitycajun.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kansascitycajun
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/kccajun
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kansascitycajun
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLjqul0eZhXCViOxYXUOSMA

Image Credits
Haze Media Group