Susana Camarena
Editor’s Note: Tacombi, a chain of taquerias founded in 2006, stands out among Mexican restaurants for its close community connections, which are fostered by the Tacombi Foundation. One of the projects of the Tacombi Foundation is the Community Kitchen, which to date has provided over 600,000 meals to people in need. Ed Avis, publisher of el Restaurante, recently interviewed Susana Camarena, Senior Director of Impact & Culture for Tacombi.
Ed Avis: I understand the meal preparation for the Community Kitchen is done at the taquerias. How does that impact the restaurant’s regular work?
Susan Camarena: I will say that it has a very positive impact within our taquerias and within our team members because they feel part of something bigger. Just to give you some context, right now we are producing over 8,000 meals every single week to donate. And this is done through the 16 taquerias that we have in New York, in Miami and in DC. Every single taqueria is responsible for producing hundreds of meals every single week.
Avis: So your regular staff prepare these meals?
Camarena: Correct, yes. We try to find the best time of the day to do the meals because we want to leverage the downtime in the taqueria. So we're not producing meals to donate in the rush of lunchtime or dinnertime.
Avis: What is in the typical meal you donate?
Camarena: We needed to make sure that the meals that we were sending were traveling well so we designed the Taco Plato, which is essentially a plate with a portion of rice and beans, a portion of veggies, and a portion of protein. Just to give you an example, what we are producing today is essentially pollo poblano, which is a recipe that one of our master taqueros created a few months ago. We did a competition between all our master taqueros so they could be creative and participate on what we were putting in the table of our beneficiaries. So in this case the Taco Plato includes pollo poblano and then Hongos ala Mexicana, which is a mix of mushrooms, corn, and other veggies, and rice and beans. On top of this, we put two tortillas, and then we put the lid on top.
Avis: That sounds delicious! Margins are tight in restaurants. How can you afford to do this?
Camarena: So I say two things. The first one is that we are very conscious about how we are preparing these meals in a way that is very efficient and cost-effective. We develop recipes that we can mass produce without sacrificing the quality of the meal. We also work with our providers, our vendors, and see how they can participate. For instance, all the meals that we donate have rice and all the rice is donated by our rice vendor. The other part is that the Tacombi Foundation is a nonprofit, which allows us to raise funds from different sources. We've gotten grants from the Hispanic Federation, from Grubhub Community Fund, from Robin Hood Foundation to name a few. Also, 100 percent of our taquerias' proceeds on Cindo de Mayo are donated to the foundation.
Avis: Do you feel the work of the foundation enhances the reputation of the restaurant itself?
Camarena: Absolutely. This initiative enhances the reputation of the brand because it's aligned with our core values and we feel proud about not only existing to serve our guests, but also our team members and our community. And this has provided a lot of pride and meaning to our team members because as I said at the beginning, they know that they're part of something bigger.
Avis: What’s next for the foundation?
Camarena: We believe that in order to achieve economic advancement, we need to make sure that people are getting the opportunities to grow. So we are building a program that will allow people to get trained in the restaurant industry and back of house and front of house, and also to gain human skills that can help them to continue growing and going up within this industry. The idea is that once they go through the program, they can find jobs that are suited for their next step in their career. Obviously, we are going to have opportunities here at Tacombi for some of them, but we don't want to narrow down their opportunity to Tacombi. They can go wherever they want. This is not for Tacombi. This is for them.