We recently connected with Javier Fernandez and have shared our conversation below.

Javier, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

social media has definitely change the world on how people see businesses. at our restaurants, we manage all of our social media feeds ourselves. my wife/business partner will post daily pictures of food and things new at our restaurant to keep the customers intact with our specials and other things. my staffs and managers will take many pictures of our food everyday and we will all decide as a team on to what food to post.

Javier, 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?

i am a chef and owner of a couple small fast casual Filipino restaurants in Maryland. my goal is to bring Filipino cuisine to the US one dish at a time. i have a french culinary background. my father (Carlito) is a retired personal chef and my mother (Gwen) started her own filipino pastry catering business that my older sister also runs in Maryland. food is definitely in my blood.

Have you ever had to pivot?

3 years into college, i was unsure of what i really wanted to do with my life. my father was a personal chef and my mother was housekeeper with a pastry catering business that she started from our basement. cooking and being a chef was something i never really thought about pursuing. that was the time when i met my wife. they all sort of pushed me into that direction and i gave it a try by entering Le Academie De Cuisine which was a local culinary school here in Maryland. That was the time in my life when i felt in love with cooking and thought that it was something i could really do in order to help promote filipino cuisine going forward. my parents and wife helped me to get to my dreams today.

How’d you meet your business partner?

my wife Jennifer is my business partner. we met through her older brother Tom who i met in college during basketball sessions at the gym. later after we got married, after working many years in the restaurant industry, and after our first kid, we decided that it was time for me to venture out and start my own restaurant/concept. she was a math major and was always great with numbers so she helped me with that aspect of the business while i continued to cook and come up with new recipes for the restaurant.

Contact Info:

• Website: kuyajas.com and lapulapumd.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/kuyaja