Torchy's Tacos founder Mike Rypka details the origins of the brand's early menu items and their long-term commercial performance.
Insight
Rypka: Banks will not lend $600K to first-time restaurant founders
“I didn't have any money. I didn't know people with money and that's really kind of almost how you have to start a restaurant. You know, bank's not going to just take a bet on you and give you a 600 grand to go open a brick and mortar restaurant.”
Disclosure
Rypka: Torchy's Tacos operated illegally from a co-founder's driveway
“We ended up for a week literally cooking out of Bill's driveway. We Took the trailer, and we hooked up the power to the trailer at his house, which was totally illegal at the time, but, you know, we were trying to stay in business and, you know, keep some cash…”
Insight
Mike Rypka: Food trailers are great for starting but unsustainable long term
“Hey, look, this is a great way to start, but it's not a good way to sustain. It's very weather-dependent, It's a lot of heavy lifting every day of like shipping food back and forth. And so I was really like, hey, we got to get a brick and mortar.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rypka: Only two of 300 promo customers agreed with critical review
“And I think out of the 300 articles we got only two people agreed with the article, so you can't please everybody, but that's a pretty impressive vote change there, so.”
Assertion Supported
Rypka: Torchy's won an 18-month lawsuit to shut down a copycat
“We definitely went to the lawyers, and the thing went on for about 18 months, but we were able to get them to close everything down, so thank goodness for that.”
Disclosure
Rypka: Torchy's founders mutually declined the CEO role after PE investment
“They had actually asked like, do one of you guys want to be the CEO? And we all kind of said no.”