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

Mani , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?

How did you scale up – often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. If your business is significantly larger today than when you first started, we’d love to hear the real story behind how you made that happen. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

The first Taco Ocho location was completely financed with my own savings. The second and third locations were a hybrid mix of funding. About 60% of the capital came from my savings, and the rest was funded from profits from the other locations. By the time I opened the fourth location, I was able to use 100% of profits from the other locations.

Scaling up is not without challenges.. It’s easy to see your original operation running smoothly and making a profit and think that everything will transfer seamlessly into additional locations.

It’s important to ensure that your first operation can run without you before opening a second location. Three years after I opened the Richardson location, I was consistently hitting a 30% increase in year-over-year sales, but when I opened my second location, my focus shifted, and my sales growth stalled. If I could go back and do it again, I would have taken a step back from running my first location for a few more months before opening another one to address any operational issues.

You may also need to make some changes as you scale. My first Tacho Ocho was in an area surrounded by lots of office buildings, but I wanted to open my second location in a more residential suburban area closer to where families live. What I learned is I needed to broaden the menu and not be so rigid specifically to appeal to children. I added quesadillas, nachos and additional salads to the menu to appeal to demands from suburban customers.

Additional locations can also put a strain on profitability, especially if the second or third locations are driving the sales necessary to stay in business. Many brands will react to this by lowering quality or decreasing portions.. I recommend making sure that you have a cushion of extra capital so that you don’t have to cut any corners or dilute your brand.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am originally from India and I moved to Texas in the 1970’s. When I came to the United States, there weren’t many options for immigrants in professional careers, so I started my career in restaurant operations. I eventually moved up to VP of Operations at Taco Bell where I oversaw company stores in half the country. After working in the restaurant industry for over 40 years, I had a dream to open my own restaurant where I could offer delicious fresh and healthy food options.

My wife is from Monterrey, Mexico and I really love Mexican and Latin culture, so when I was creating Taco Ocho, I drew inspiration from Latin America and created a restaurant that serves made-from-scratch tacos seemed like the right choice. I opened the first Taco Ocho in Richardson, Texas in 2011 and we now have four locations across DFW including Frisco, Flower Mound and McKinney.

Taco Ocho is a casual restaurant for foodies who aren’t afraid to go bold. Our fresh made-from-scratch food features bold, authentic flavors inspired by traditional Latin cooking. We use real premium ingredients including fresh produce, all natural cheeses, sustainably-sourced seafood and preservative-free tortillas.
Taco Ocho is open for breakfast. Lunch and dinner, as well as weekend brunch. We have a full bar of hand-crafted cocktails to compliment our menu. Our guests love our diverse menu and there’s something for everyone. Some of our stand out menu items include our Latin Love Taco and Jalapeno Pork. We also offer some innovative vegan choices like the Ranchero Taco and Sweet Potato Quesadilla featuring a black bean spread, sweet potatoes, roasted corn and cilantro topped with a guajillo-tamarind drizzle.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Opening a restaurant is very hard and every day can bring a new set of challenges so I’ve had to pivot a few times. Almost 60% of restaurants fail in the first year, and I didn’t want to become another statistic.

Our first location in Richardson had great weekday lunch business from office buildings around the location, but struggled on weekends and nights. Instead of throwing in the towel and closing earlier, I decided I needed to really come up with something great to get people to come in during the less busy times. I decided to actually open earlier and added breakfast and weekend brunch. People love our breakfast tacos and brunch options, so both have grown to now be a significant portion of my business..

By the time the pandemic hit, I had grown to three locations, but having to close our dining rooms really necessitated some big changes for us. Like many restaurants, we quickly added new delivery partners, online ordering and contactless pick-up procedures to ensure guests could still enjoy our Latin flavors at home. These new channels were really impactful at our Richardson location where we had previously depended heavily on catering and lunch traffic from area businesses. We kept them once dining rooms were able to reopen, but we were faced with a new challenge of finding team members. To overcome this, I reworked my business model from a fast-casual counter service model to more of a casual dining restaurant. The restaurant design had also evolved since opening the first location. I had already added a bar area and more comfortable seating, so the move to a full-service model really worked. I was able to provide a better experience for my guests and pay my team members more, so it was a win all around. We even were able to open the McKinney location during this time, so we really emerged from the pandemic stronger than ever.

Any advice for managing a team?

People development is my specialty. Managing a team starts with education and training. Those things are a huge focus for me as a business owner.

I always appreciated the leaders who took the time to take me under their wings, give me systems and processes and show me how to do things the right way. Most importantly, they saw me as a human being, not just a worker bee, so I aim to do the same thing for my employees.

I also think it’s important to know what motivates your employees outside of work. In the down time, (and yes, there is downtime in restaurants), I try to learn things about my team so I can better relate to them and understand them. A server who was a great athlete in high school but underperformed on the job made a turnaround when I started using sports analogies and engaging their competitive side.

Many people who work for me, like some front-of-house team members, may not be looking to make the restaurant industry their long-term goal, but I still really enjoy teaching. I try to share information that may be able to apply to other areas of their lives.

Some of the things I teach may seem inconsequential, especially things like packaging to-go orders, how the napkins and plasticware need to go in the bag, and why some products need to be placed on the bottom of the bag. These small things make a difference with customers.

But sometimes I have an opportunity to teach life lessons. I teach about doing the right thing, even if it’s not always the most profitable choice. I lead by example. If a customer’s order isn’t right or up to our standards, instead of sending it out anyway or trying to make it work, we re-make it. Saving a few bucks in the short term can actually cost money in the long term, especially if a decision to cut corners makes you lose that customer for life.

I am not a big fan of using contests for motivation. I’d rather pay my team as much as I can so they have money to pay their bills and live. It’s hard to involve back of house team members or bartenders in contests. You can’t sell food or drinks without people to make them, so instead of individual contests, I try to get everyone to work together as part of one team.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tacoocho.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tacoocho/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tacoocho/

Image Credits
Teresa Rafidi Leele Girma