We recently connected with Karla Ibarra and have shared our conversation below.

Karla, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Holy Avocado was created with the main purpose to keep society healthy. Avocados provide many benefits to human bodies: good for the heart, improves digestive system, help with brain health, etc, etc. The idea is to keep people away from junk food, which has been so bad for humanity for the last 4 decades. By providing food we’ve always liked to eat, made in a healthy and clean way, it’s a motivation for everybody to eat better, to keep their bodies healthier and live longer. That’s exactly what Holy Avocado was created for, for humans to have the opportunity to keep the pace the world is moving at (which is very fast speed) while having the option to eat healthy fast food. Normally, healthy food is considered boring food. And that’s because not everybody wants to eat salads or quinoa bowls every day. We got used to the burgers, the hot dogs, the tacos. And there’s nothing wrong about eating those types of foods, we just have to eat the right ones, the ones that are made with ingredients that will do good for the body, and that is Holy Avocado. All ingredients are picked keeping in mind the main objective to provide health to our customers: organic lettuce, organic tomatoes, brioche bread, no oils, no trans fats, fresh fruit smoothies, very little dairy (only cheese), very little sugar (only brown sugar), nothing fried. In a few words, Holy Avocado is reaching out to EVERYONE to eat healthy, but good and delicious, not sacrificing flavor at all. Holy Avocado caters to vegans, meat lovers, vegetarians, pescatarians. We just want to keep everyone feeling good with what they eat.
It’s a healthy way of eating what we’ve always liked.
Our slogan: Eat Avocados, live longer.

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 name is Karla Ibarra (aka The Avocado Queen). I was introduced to the restaurant business by one of my favorite companies in the world: Marriott International. They are exceptional in everything they do. Back in 2006, after a career in banking, I started working for Marriott, which was the best “life university” in customer service and high standards. I’ve always been a very detail oriented person, one who has as-close-to-perfection standards. I like everything to look good, to feel good, to taste good, I’ve always strived for the best. I’m extremely organized and neat. In the restaurant business, all those factors are important to make things work.
I also love to serve people. I like to put smiles on people’s faces. I like to make people feel good.
Holy Avocado is the result of those two key factors of my personality: high standards type person and my spirit to serve. Holy Avocado is a revolutionary healthy fast food restaurant. My biggest wish is to collaborate in making people feel good and keeping them healthy. I want EVERYONE to have a long healthy life. So I created Holy Avocado, to incorporate Avocados into people’s diets, a superfood liked by a vast majority of people, that only do good things to humans bodies. The ingredients I picked for every menu item are clean, avoiding processes, oils, chemicals, etc. I want people to eat the best on a daily basis, but without sacrificing what they’ve always liked to eat. We can perfectly continue eating burgers, we just need the right type of burger: grass fed beef, no bad oils, an excellent type of bread, organic lettuce, organic sauce, and of course adding the Avocado to the recipe, to get all the benefits from it.
Holy Avocado is the next generation fast food chain.

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

Building a business from scratch, without personal capital is a huge challenge. I started Holy Avocado with $0 in my bank account. I created a beautiful concept, that everyone loves, from ground zero and without any money. While your brand gets in front of many people’s eyes, the hustle is present every day. Surviving in the market with an awesome concept but with little capital is for the brave. So yes, Holy Avocado has definitely been through near death moments, specially when it comes to staffing. This is the hardest hurdle we’ve had to deal with. After Covid, recruiting has become a very difficult task to perform. Every single restaurant is struggling to get employees, and when we get them, the retention is also hard to accomplish. Many remote job options were created during the pandemic, and that’s why a lot of the restaurant industry employees are very limited, because they rather work in their pijamas at home. Also, payroll is the highest expense for us right now, and while the concept reaches top popularity, labor costs take a big part of the revenue. It’s a matter of pushing, and pushing harder every time. Day by day, the brand gets more exposure, sales increase, and the panic vanishes away. Having created a strong concept like Holy Avocado makes me want to have millions of dollars available, to expand the brand and be able to feed everybody with food that’s is right, that is healthy, that is clean, and delicious. with the superfood Avocado.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

It’s really a very funny story. I had $0 to start the business, when I say $0, it’s seriously net $0. All I wanted to do was to create a food service that will improve everyone’s eating habits and health.
So I participated in an open house at a very popular out door mall in Miami. Out of 100 vendors, Holy Avocado was selected to take a small cart in the mall. I had no idea how I was going to get the money to start the spot that I won.
One day, out of nowhere, at the restaurant where I was a General Manager, my bartender overhears I’m opening up a business. He wanted to also have a business himself. So he put in $10,000 to keep 20% of the business. And that’s how we were able to buy the inventory, pay for deposit and rent at the mall, buy little equipment, and basically start operations. After two weeks from opening, this bartender who became owner of 20% of my business, decides to pull out of the company, leaving me back with 100% of the shares of the concept I had created.
A couple of months later, Covid hit. We opened in October 2019 and had to close in March 2020. Since the concept has so much potential, I was trying to find ways to keep it alive. That’s when I decided to invest in a food truck. During the Covid lockdown, we all received help from the government, so I decided to learn how to trade stocks, and this way to come up with some money to buy the first truck and build it out. I also worked for many nights as an Uber driver. I also, had a job as a Restaurant General Manager. All I was trying to accomplish, was to provide the market a healthy way of eating fast food with the use of superfood avocado.
The first truck was not pretty at all, but that’s how we started working. And then, we made it prettier, bought a second truck, as the business was being very successful. Then, the restaurant came, then two investors bought 2 more trucks. And that’s how we started building Holy Avocado, here to improve peoples way of eating.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.holyavocadousa.com
• Instagram: @holyavocado_usa
• Facebook: Holy Avocado- Hallandale
• Yelp: Holy Avocado
• Other: Tik Tok: @holyavocado_usa

Image Credits
German