Local StoriesNovember 18, 2024

Meet Israel Sanchez

Local Stories

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Israel Sanchez. Israel was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented William Lopez.

Israel, can you walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
In 2000 my dad approached me about potentially opening up another restaurant having established our footprint in Chicago and serving great Mexican food and killer margaritas he wanted to expand to another location at that time. I was interning and decided to put that on pause and give my dad a hand launching this new Establishment . In October 2002 we probably open Cesars on Broadway at 2924 N. on Broadway in Chicago

Please tell us more about your brand, Cesar’s Killer Margaritas
Cesars is a family restaurant that serves authentic Mexican food and Chicago. We’ve been in business since 1991. This location in particular was opened up in 2002. Our menu consist of family recipes passed down from generations Sprinkled with a few modern trends. We are famously known for a killer margaritas as we serve over 30 flavors of different margaritas.

William Lopez and Alternative Strategies have been great to us and I know you’ve got a great relationship with them as well. Maybe you can tell our audience a bit about William Lopez and Alternative Strategies and your experience with them.
Wiliam and I go back over 30 years having met in high school. Our careers took different routes, but at the end of the day we ended up doing what we love. Having been in business for over 30 years, I noticed that the successful companies always had some sort of public relations management company, and that’s what made them stand out. As we navigated through Covid and found different ways to pivot whether it was through social media newsletters, what have you we were able to stay float, but there was always this missing piece and it wasn’t until one day Wiliam came in that we connected.

After finally giving him and his company a chance we found out that AltStrat could be a value add from a PR Perspective, but before we moved forward we had a few things we wanted to remain intact.

One of my request was that we were able to keep a couple of different components in place as I had built relationships over the past years that had helped establish Cesar’s as one of the best restaurants in Chicago. We’ve worked with our graphic designer for over 20 years and really wanted to keep that relationship intact knowing that altstrat provided the same services. Our social media company was new to us but I felt we had a great connection and didn’t want to lose that momentum.

The on boarding for Cesars at AltStrat was seamless. We were quickly introduced to our account manager and different team members from AltStrat that would help make immediate impact in our public relations.

One of the first things that made an immediate impact in making sure that all the pieces gelled was a quarterly meeting organized by Jessica from AltStrat. These meetings, take place every couple months and we go over target dates, goals, and brainstorm ideas for future opportunities. On these calls, we have people from AltStrat, our graphic designers. Our social media team are photographers all working together to help reach our goals.

I’m glad to say that not only has AltStrat made an immediate impact on our business, but it also has helped as a resource as we navigate through this post Covid business world. The restaurant businesses is ever evolving – things are always changing and having the ability to talk to anyone from AltStrat about what’s happening in the industry whether it’s in San Diego, Chicago or anywhere in the world it’s one of the things that we value the most.