Community Highlights: Meet Isai & Karina Martinez of Tacos Barbon

Today we’d like to introduce you to Isai & Karina Martinez.

Hi Isai & Karina, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
I’ve always been drawn to cooking, specifically grilling and love a good BBQ. There is something so fulfilling about hearing someone say they love your food, the food you just spent time and effort into cooking. It’s a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that I have never experienced in anything else that I have done. My favorite part of the week was stopping at the store after a long week of work on a Friday and picking up some ribeye steaks or a piece of flap steak for carne asada and getting home to throw it on my grill! Sometimes we would have family over and sometimes just the kids and us. We always have fun being in the kitchen together whether it’s a fancy dinner or just some homemade pizzas in the oven. In our home, our kitchen is probably the most important space for us.

Our kids love getting involved and it has brought us together making so many memories. I like to call them my sous chefs when they are helping which they don’t always like because they want to be in charge! Another aspect of this is that both my wife and I love to entertain and this is a large part of how our adventure started. We had always talked about opening up some type of food based business but it was always just that, an idea, a dream, something to work towards. We had this vision of how it would happen but we never imagined it would happen the way that it did. Our backgrounds are so far off from food service that some would say it made no sense and when I tell people what I used to do, I often get this blank stare as if to say, what is this guy doing? My background is in Architectural Drafting & Design and my wife has always worked in the administrative / clerical field. We both knew that we no longer enjoyed what we did but were never going to take the leap to leave our jobs to chase a dream while raising a family! But in the fall of 2019 we decided to purchase a small hot dog cart as a way to build up a side business and make extra cash.

Our plan at first was to repurpose it to sell tacos at local farmers markets and events. Little did we know that in a few months, it would turn into our financial life line. This cart became a Godly provision! In December of 2019 we held our first event within our community at a neighborhood arts and crafts sale. It was the first time we had ever cooked for more than just a handful of house guests and family! To our surprise it went really well! The worse part was trying to keep up with our ever growing line! Although we sold out that day I was not sure if food service was for me! We enjoyed the cooking part of it but the rest of the job seemed so foreign to the both of us! The hard work was overshadowed by how much fun it was to interact with customers and meet new people in this way. This is what really attracted us to push thru. Our next event was Buckeye Days, a much larger event which took place in January of 2020. This event also went really well and our plan for the rest of the year was too slowly grow into doing more events each month.

But in March, everything changed, the pandemic hit. All of the events we had been booking were canceled and the quarantine shut us down for good! We decided it was not the right time. At least we still had our jobs to rely on but this would soon change as well. Towards the end of March my pay and hours were cut and I suddenly had lots of extra time with the quarantine and less days of work. We decided to sell tacos out of our home to our neighborhood since some neighbors we had met at the arts and crafts sale had been asking for our tacos. So every week we would post our food on Facebook and take preorders then deliver to their homes on the weekend. We did this for a few weeks with such a good response but with us still working our full time jobs we decided to place things on hold for a while. But in mid-May the unthinkable happened, I was fired from my job, the company I had been with for 14 years had just dropped me out of nowhere. I remember driving home that day thinking about what to do. I had never been jobless before and in the middle of a pandemic! I just thought to myself, we have that cart, we can sell tacos until I find a new job. I lost my job on a Wednesday and by that Saturday of the same week, we were out on the side of a road on a dirt lot selling tacos. We had no choice but to go for it. Things were either going to work or not and we had no time think twice about it.

The first few weeks were very hard, we would have our kids help us prep, and even had them out there with us in some intense heat! We felt like such terrible parents at that point! We didn’t know what was going to happen and my initial kept being that “this just needs to get us by until I find a job”. I was sending out resumes everyday but our sales were only getting better with every passing day. We decided to add more days and moved to a gas station where they allowed us to park. We knew we needed an actual food trailer; our cart was too small for the volume of customers we were getting and the amount of food we needed to take. So, we went all in! After just two weeks we came across a trailer that was just about what we could afford at the time. We put up practically our entire life savings to purchase it. Two months went by before we could actually use it as it needed to be repaired, permitted and cleaned up. By this time, it was almost the end of July and we finally debuted our finished trailer! We decided it was best for my wife to quit her job so that we could place all of our efforts into the business. I eventually stopped sending out resumes even turning down a few jobs offers! Since this time we have slowly grown our business and have slowly added to our menu. We have added a small staff to help out mostly made up of family who at first we could not afford to pay but they faithfully stuck with us. We will forever be thankful to them. We will especially be thankful for my bother-in-law Israel Cano who basically worked for free for the first few months! Our lines continue to grow and grow just like that very first day at the arts and crafts sale.

We very much enjoy talking to our customers, even forming friendships with some of them who have been with us from the start as well as new faces that have become our regulars! For some it’s become somewhat of a weekend tradition to come by and get tacos for dinner. We do everything we can to make visiting our food truck more of an experience than a simple takeout spot. In these times where there is so much going on around us in our world, if we are able to provide a small distraction from all of that or maybe just de-stress from a long day or week of work even for just a few minutes, it’s an awesome thing to be part of that! We have big plans for 2021 and have high hopes for even more growth and expansion to come! The long lines are certainly a welcome sight as more and more people find out why we are not your average taco!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has been a complete 180 turnaround from what we have always done for a living. It’s changed our lives completely as far as work schedules and family time. Before we were off on the weekends now we are working on weekends and off during the week so this has been something we and our kids have had to get accustomed to. Navigating thru all of the initial legal paperwork and permits has been a completely new experience for us. Learning how to run the business side of things never having been in that position before has been especially rewarding but very tedious and hard at times. We have made mistakes but have had to learn from them very quickly! This has turned into a full time job for both my wife and I, often times working 6 days a week. Finding a location willing to allow us to park our trailer was very difficult at first. The pandemic has made it difficult to find certain supplies and equipment. Also the cost of goods are in flux constantly.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Tacos Barbon?
We are in the food truck business. We are a startup company in business for about eight months. We specialize in Mexican street tacos with our own little twist. We serve fire-grilled meats which means we grill all of our meats over charcoal for an authentic flavor. We are best known for serving ribeye steak tacos and other specialty meats such as our carne asada which is made with flap steak also known as Arrachera. We are the only food truck we know of that offers these types of specialty meats in the area. Our birria is made using angus beef. We are most proud of the fact that our food is fresh and made daily using our very own recipes and spice mixtures. We make everything from scratch and we take no short cuts. We use only quality meats and ingredients. We absolutely love what we do! We are passionate about providing quality food and top notch service. Our slogan is “Not Your Average Taco” and it is something that we don’t just say as a catch phrase. It’s at the very heart of Tacos Barbon. We aim to do everything with a high degree of excellence that makes you forget that you were just at a food truck. We take pride in picture perfect food that tastes even better than it looks, served in a professional yet personal and friendly manner. We want to serve food the way we would serve it to our own family and friends at one of our gatherings. This is who we are, the food is only what we do.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Our professional background is not in food service. I am also a musician, I play bass guitar, acoustic guitar and piano. Our logo was inspired by a picture of me “Mr. Barbon” taken at Laguna Beach CA. on an anniversary getaway vacation. We were only dreamers at the time!

Pricing:

• RIbeye tacos: $3.50
• Asada tacos: $2.75
• Chicken & Al Pastor tacos: $2.50
• Red tacos: $3.50
• Birria tacos: $2.75

Contact Info:

• Email: tacosbarbon@outlook.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tacosbarbon/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Tacosbahrbohn