Today we’d like to introduce you to JUAN ANGEL MARTINEZ OCHOA.
JUAN ANGEL, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
The story goes like this; 13 years ago i was working asa Chef in a fine dining restaurant in Monterey Mexico after being some months working on San Sebastian Spain for a 3 Michelin Star restaurant. And i was happy with my job but i knew deep in muy gut that there has to be something else, something more fulfulling than working just for a paycheck to paycheck building something for someone else, so i wanted to start my own gig, my own project. The GM of the restaurant and my self quitted our job and with no money at all, started to pivot some ideas of what our new venture could be. Maybe a food truck on a parking stand making top notch comfort food raised to another level, or may, but suddenly my potential partner stoped answering my calls, for several weeks… His girlfriend was pregnant and he couldn risk to be an entrepeneur, so que quit the project. And that put me on a situation of doubt i should quit too, or continue, but i persist. I sold mi f150 truck por 10k usd, (which is nothing in the food and beverage world) and i decides to myself that i was going to do it myself. Not clearly what… but something.
There are to quick stories that defined mainly our projetc. The first one is that:
1 week later i decided to go for a trip with some friend to Atlanta Georgia, to a conference in the former Georgia dome, and in the event i heard a lot of lectures speaking of do what you can do with wath you have reachable in your hands… so in the lunch break they gave away 65 thousand lunch boxes of jason delli sandwiches and i told myself… this it it… this is what i have in my hand. I dont have the money to open a restaurant, but i have the talent, the recipes and the inspiration to make a great product with a great packaging in a trhiving delivery world. So i went back home and i started what in we call now a “ghost kitchen” or a dark kitchen, concept that didnt existed in that moment. In my mom´s backyard, i builded a second hand equipped kitchen, and thats how we startaed. social media, friend and family and that´s it. I invited Jorge a friend of mine to the project and we together hustle it out serving, buying, prepping, delivering, cooking, etc.
So why burgers? that brings the second story, in that same days i was in my house developing the concepto and my sister was watching HIMYM and i found my self watching for the first time this episode where marshall and eric went to nyc for the first time, and marshall got lost looking for something to eat but then he finds a humble and shady burger joint with a neon sign that would bring hin to an epiphany or a culinary orgasm with the best burger that he had ate in his life… so that experience gave birth in the show to our mantra; Just a burger? its so much more than just a burger…. and when i saw that i said to my self, there is no a burger in my city, in my country, or even int he places i have travelled, that makes you say o feel something like that, so thats the moment when i said to myself; “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED”. And that i how all our unconventional burger recipes where born.
Now we have 14 stores in Monterrey, Mexico City, Saltillo and now in San Diego California, and planning to open more, especially in the states, because we strongly believe and we hear daily of our guests that our burgers step up to the expectation of that marshall´s experience.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Smooth would definitely not be the best word to describe the travel! i always use the word fun in an ironic way to not use frightengin, hard or stressful. Because if you want to live in the restaurant world you have to embrace that stress and struggle is your bread and butter, and even your way to have fun in life.
We have tons of stories of some hiccups or struggles that we have met in this 12 years, but, maybe the season that describes the best the challenges that we have faced and the resilience that it took was COVID season. 2020-2022… the shut downs, the paranoia on some guests, the sales shrinking, and the expenditures dont going down… that brought out the most deepful braveness and instinct that we didnt even ne we had inside. After several years being a casual restaurant with servers, bar, and full service, we almost pivot the entire business again to delivery and virtual brands to survive in that season of time, and i think that given the situation we did it phenomenal.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Im an strange combination of passions, music has always been in my DNA, philosofy and theology is something that several years in my life was part of my studies, and food was my wayout to express my creativity in a more tangible and profitable way.
So when i think of flavour design in a dish or a recipe, i think in terms of rock and roll, in terms of jazz… in terms of emotion… or expression.
So when you think of a burger, its not common to think in ginger, apple, serrano chile, cherry tomatoe, vinager, honey.. but thats a more progessive rocking kind of burger that has more volume than just cheese and bacon. And thats what i try to express in my cooking and our menu. Burgers, some simple 4 note well executed cheese burgers, and some of them a little more complex not for the daily expectation but sometimes you need something more.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
thats a tough one. We can call it luck, privilege, context, we all receive in life diferent set of game cards, but is not what you receive, but what you doi with them. So in that regard, my concept of luck has to do with that, surely i have been sometimes in the right place in the right moment with the right people, some other times i havent, but is how you deal with eiter one or the other.
Pricing:
- Our big burgers start form 9 dollars
- To more complex ones in 13 to 15 dollars
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tfbburgers.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefoodboxusa
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/the.foodbox
