Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rafael Materra. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Rafael , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Quality control is a challenge almost every entrepreneur has had to focus on when growing – any advice, stories or insight around how to best ensure quality is maintained as your business scales?

The best way I have found to maintain quality control as we grew was through focusing on simple but creative ideas for our menu. Regardless of what kind of food we are choosing to cook, I’ve chosen to keep our recipes simple and to focus on the main food that is being cooked. I will create everything from scratch, sourcing and using the best quality ingredients.

The quality control I put into place focuses on simple aspects, allowing me to really showcase the flavor and technique of any recipes we cook. Within doing this, it allows me to focus on keeping a clean and well maintained kitchen or cooking space. Whether I’m at the prep kitchen or cooking at a farmers market in my booth. I highly value the idea of maintaining the best quality control for both our food, food safety, and the tools we use to cook with.

The stories are endless on why it is so important to maintain quality control in our industry. For both food, the tools we use, and the kitchen we are cooking in. The two most commons reasons for this, is you hear how so many places lose traction when the quality in any of these sections fall behind. Especially if it leads to food poisoning. I’ve worked in kitchens that I had to walk away from because of how much they lacked in quality control. I’ve heard stories of restaurants going under due to the quality of food falling apart. Ultimately losing the customers that they obtained through the quality they had started out with. I have also heard stories of popular restaurants going under from the lack in quality control for food safety and a clean kitchen. I feel that it doesn’t just lead to lost opportunity but is robbing the customers of their right to go out for a safe and clean meal that they are paying for. A meal that usually is not cheap in these current times either. This effect also goes the other way when these values are kept for high quality control. It builds trust among the community, showing them that can go out to eat and get what they are paying for. Leading to an amazing experience and memories to hold on too. It will lead to massive success too if quality control can be maintained and held in high value. I know plenty of restaurants that have the been very successful when keeping to these values as well. For me, I can’t get enough of those kind of restaurants and will always go back for more delicious meals.

My main advice for those who are concerned about quality control as they grow is to keep it simple. Don’t let your quality control fall behind for a complicated idea, the want to grow fast, or to bring in a killing of profit. It will never last in the long run and will quickly be forgotten for the business that do focus on maintaining their quality control. For the sake of their customers and the pride they have for their craft.

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?

Hello, my name is Rafael Materra. I am currently 28, about to turn 29 years old and I have always had a deep passion for cooking. I first became fascinated with cooking back when I was a 6 years old, when my grandfather would show me how he made his fresh loafs of bread or his popular peach cobbler. From there on, my passion just grew as I continued to be introduced to different types of meals, foods, and recipes. My grandmother also became a huge influence on me with so many of her recipes, one being her Mac n Cheese. That has become one of my favorite dishes to cook now as an adult.

As I grew up I would watch lots of shows on the cooking channels, whether it was on competitions, exploring food origins, learning recipes and techniques, as well as shows that focused on helping failing restaurants. As my passion grew from this, I had decided that this was a career path I wanted to pursue. Once I got into junior and senior year of high school I choose to take a culinary class my high school was offering. From there I got my first job in the industry, working for a new restaurant that had just opened by a near by college in San Marcos. I had left that job for a different job at a renowned restaurant over in Escondido, called Hacienda De Vega. It was there, where I really started learning more and more about cooking techniques, expanding my knowledge for authentic Hispanic food. After I had move on from that job, I went from kitchen to kitchen learning skills and tricks working on the line. Learning how to push through high volume rushes. That was a huge learning curb for me but it really made me realize my love for cooking and the pride I took putting out delicious food. It showed me my value for quality control and my belief for only putting food out that I would want to eat myself. If it didn’t meet that standard, I would start over and make it again until it met that standard. Around the end of 2016, I had the opportunity to work in a high end kitchen at a renowned Hotel, “The Inn in Rancho Santa Fe”. There I learned lots of techniques in both cooking and how to maintain quality control through the ingredients I used, as well as the maintaining a clean cooking space. Working here built my discipline for keeping these values alive for my cooking. I ultimately left this job to focus on other career paths but continued to focus on my passion for cooking, learning new techniques every year.

After a long time away from this industry, at the age of 27, I had finally pushed myself to come back to the cooking industry. In the way of starting my own business. “Rafa’s Kitchen”. I chose this for name for my business as my main goal was to travel and do farmers markets, fairs, and catering special events. That way I could express my main love for cooking which is cooking all kinds of foods from around the world and not be subjected to just one cooking style/ origin. It showed to be a good decision too, since I started this business I have cooked at markets/ special events making everything from American style food to Asian food to Mediterranean food and now back to my own origins, authentic mexican food. I have been specializing in particularly street tacos and mulitas a long with burritos and quesadillas. For our street tacos and mulitas, we hand press our own corn tortillas on site at every market and is a catering package option for our clients. When it comes to our salsas, we make them all from scratch, we also pickle our own onions and jalapeños. I’ve created our own marinate recipes for our two main meats, steak and chicken. For our burritos and quesadillas, I’ve sourced a high quality mix of cheeses and a Sonoran style flour tortilla. I really can’t use any other flour tortilla, I have fallen in love with this style of flour tortilla. It is thicker, full of flavor, and holds up a lot more than a regular flour tortilla. I have a lot of customers that have told me how much they love my recipes and the way I cook these foods. It brings me immense joy to hear this. This pushes me every day to continue to focus on these kinds of ingredients, putting all the love that I can into my cooking.

All I want is for people, fans, or our amazing customers to know about myself, my brand, my business, “Rafa’s Kitchen”, is that no matter what kind of origin of food that I am cooking. I put my all into what I do. Never leaving the love out of the recipes we cook. Sourcing the best and finest ingredients to use for our meals. Having this opportunity to have my own business, cooking what I choose to cook, and creating recipes that I have such a connection too; is a life dream I never thought I would have the chance to experience. A dream I have had since I was a kid, when I knew nothing of this industry. I’m beyond grateful for all the support I have received and love that has been shown for my cooking. I look forward every day to thinking of new ideas for my menu and every week for the chance to cook for the communities I have become a part of. As well as looking forward to all the new communities I will have the opportunity to cook for. Nothing brings me more happiness than sharing the love and warmth of food with this world. Sharing my passion with new people every week. Seeing all the joy it brings to people to have a delicious unique meal and how it brings people together. Watching memories being made for a person, a parent, a child to remember and think back on later in their life as I did. This is the greatest opportunity of all and I couldn’t ask for more. My dream has truly become reality and for that I thank everyone. Whether they tried my food or shared a conversation about what I do or simply life. I couldn’t be more blessed for this chance and opportunity of life.

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

The beginning of my journey was first figuring out what would work. That required a lot of resilience to get through that stage. I did a lot of trail and error finding my niche when it came to cooking. I tried several things like, pita wraps, bratwurst, patty melts, sub sandwiches, etc, People were enjoying what I was cooking but nothing would stick. At first I was hesitant to try the street tacos but one day I was suggested the idea of hand pressing my own tortillas on site. Until one day when I decided to go with the idea and it was a hit. From then I dialed in on my set up, my recipes and finding the right markets that fit me. Finally I started gaining traction and was getting returning customers just for the tortillas I would hand press fresh on site. Now I couldn’t imagine doing anything else and couldn’t be more thankfully for finding this route. Everyday I think about how staying resilient got me here and reminds me to never give up.

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

Many times during this path I have had to learn to pivot. When I started doing markets, I was reselling Mediterranean bread and pastries. It gained traction for several months til things started to slow down. Eventually I had to accept it wasn’t enough of a niche and I had to finally pivot into cooking. Even with my love with cooking, seeing how dysfunctional the industry was it kept me from going down that path. Once I finally decided to do so, it reminded me how much I really do love the food industry and to pursue it in my own way. It has shown to be a night and day difference from working in a chaotic kitchen. This was a huge life lesson for me on how important it is to pivot when things don’t go as plan. As well as a big moment in my life and business when I had to pivot towards a different direction in order to succeed.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rafaskitchen.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rafas_kitchen760/

Image Credits

These were all taken by myself, Rafael Materra. Self port was taken by my girlfriend Stephanie Lugo