We were lucky to catch up with Romello Orr recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Romello thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

NEVER GIVE UP

October 14th – 2019 I was employed by the state of Illinois – working as a Mental Health Technician.
I was instructed to respond to a patient behavior, which required me to run to the response. Once I got there, I helped as instructed and in the process I was assaulted by one of our developmentally disabled patients. I was kicked three times in the head – resulting in me being unconscious for 32 minutes. Once I awoke I couldn’t remember anything, or anybody.

I was sent home and put on a workman’s compensation case. I was forced by my medical provider to be off work and on bedrest for 8 months. Not being able to work and provide for my family sent me into a very deep depression being that I was a workaholic before the injury. After 8 months my job denied liability and fault in me getting injured and fired me through a letter. which left me with zero income to pay what bills and items I could afford to cover.

Not being released to work by my neurologist, and primary care doctor – gave me no option but to spend every penny I had in savings to cover my expenses. After my savings were exhausted, I thought of ways to make a income but I found none.

My mother who was supportive and there with me the entire time gave me a idea. she said to me “you love to cook, why won’t you try to sell a few dinners to make some money?” I said “well I never thought about it honestly. living in a area where we were considered a food desert because we had no grocery store or restaurants within 20 to 30 miles. It sparked fire in me – I risked my last $600 dollars on buying equipment and food for my first time selling food to the public.

My very first time selling food I did a “10pc wing and fry special” for $10 it returned me a profit of 1400 dollars. the amount of support I got really shocked me so I began cooking once a week and it was gaining more and more buzz. my clients had persuaded me to do it everyday, and I thought to myself this could be something that could actually take care of my family if done right.

I bought land from the county assessors office and placed a 12×32 “tiny home’ shell Rent to own building there and transformed it into a commercial kitchen and drive thru restaurant. it took me a summation of two years to get the building complete and to get all inspections passed.

Now being my first full year open, I’ve made over 150k in sales and we’ve just hired our first set of employee’s as I start my journey of buying or building a food truck. My story is long but my Mission is simple – I want to help as many entrepreneurs build their businesses, and flourish from working a regular 9-5 – to working to build their dreams.

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?

a 27 years old father of two daughters 7 & 3
entrepreneur, & Multi Business Owner
I’ve lived in the city of Cairo, Illinois my entire life.
I have always loved to cook and try new styles of food.

I opened a full service Drive thru in the city of Cairo, IL
we offer a variety of chicken products that caters to the demographic of people in our area.
we do what is called “A Daily Special” everyday so we don’t burn our customers out on chicken wings
we offer catering services for large events (private or social)
I also branched off and received training to become a personal/private chef.
I feel like what sat me apart from others was my drive and determination
I was not afraid of hearing the word, no – I just kept reaching for my goal.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

yes! my side hustle of selling food from home just to generate enough funds to cover my monthly expenses, really became my full time job. owning a business of some sort has always been a thought of mine but I never was passionate about anything else but cooking.

my side hustle started from risking $600 and making $1400 profit the very first sale I started. The created something that I get invited to a lot of community and social events to set up my concession stand to sell hot wings and fries and many other items now. every year the menu and the business scale grows.

Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?

I purchased a property from the Illinois Property Tax sale at the county assessors office for around $750 at the time I went to a tiny home lot, where I financed a 12×32 “tiny home shell”
while selling food and dinner plates from home I acquired enough funds in a two year span to pay cash for all of the needed repairs and upgrades done to the building.
I year to date only owe 1,340 left on my property and once its paid off I plan on doing much needed upgrades to my drive thru.
starting with the entire structure, the menu board and intercom system and also parking spaces.
being that my business didn’t qualify for certain loans or certain grant programs.
a lot of funding and opportunities I found myself ineligible for because of where my restaurant was geographically located within town.
this posed a issue of trying to receive funds which would’ve helped me open much faster.
I decided that I had to want to build this and bring it to life regardless of who or what organization, refused to help.

Contact Info:

• Website: Under maintenance – we’re updating our online ordering portion
• Instagram: cosmiccreations_01
• Facebook: Romello Orr / Cosmic Creations Wings & More LLC