The Love Story Behind District Taco

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Editor’s Note: Osiris Hoil founded District Taco in 2008. In this first person story related to Publisher Ed Avis, he tells the story of the love behind his success.

     I was born in Mexico, in Yucatan. When I decided to move to America in 2000, I landed in Denver, Colorado. I was just 17 years old. I was very entrepreneurial already because in Mexico I was selling newspapers on the streets. I was selling popsicles, selling flowers on my bicycle. I always was finding ways to make a penny. And when I came to United States, I found a job in the restaurant industry because a lot of my friends were working there.

     I wanted to learn English so I could get a promotion at my job, because I was a dishwasher and I was making minimum wage at that point, which was $7 or something. I want to be the prep guy so I can make 25 cents more. And then I got to meet this beautiful lady in the restaurant. She was the waitress, and she's American. And she didn't speak any Spanish. She was really nice to workers and she was beautiful. I was like, I need to talk to this girl, but I don't know how, because I don't speak the language.

      I took some classes at the community college, but also I met these people that were regulars at the bar in the restaurant and they were trying to teach me English. I always say, Hey, look, my best teachers, they were drunk people, because they were very patient, they were regulars. They had nothing else to do. And I guess when they felt that they were teaching me, they felt that they were doing something good. Right?

     So finally my English was getting better and I asked this girl out, her name is Jennifer. She didn't accept because, I don't know why, maybe because I just was the prep guy. But in the restaurant I was learning from dishwashing, from prepping, from running the kitchen. For three years I was asking her to go out with me. Then finally, after I had been at the restaurant six years, Jennifer finally accepted to go out with me. And sure enough, that same year, 2006, we got married.

     Jennifer is from Arlington, Virginia. And when we got married, we decided we want to have kids, so we decided to move to Arlington, Virginia so we could have our kids and her mom around to support us. I found a job in a Mexican restaurant by the Pentagon, but I felt like I wasn't providing for my family. So I applied for a construction job and I got it. They saw my work ethic, and eventually I became the superintendent running the commercial projects. My wife was working too, and we bought a tiny house. Our first child was born already, and my wife was pregnant with our second child. Life is good.

     But in 2008 the economy crashed. So unfortunately, the construction company laid me off. I didn’t know what to do. My wife is pregnant, I just got a mortgage and I felt that the whole world just collapsed around my shoulders. I felt like a failure. I didn't know how I was going to tell my wife that I just lost my job. So I drove to her office, I said, I need to talk to you. Can you come down here? I told her about it and I started crying. And I remember she said, Baby, don't worry. We're going to be okay. When she said that to me, I just felt more like, I don't know, more calm. I have this support. Not everything is on me. She got my back and it felt really good. It felt really good.

     After I got laid off I was brainstorming with my friend, Marc Wallace, who lives right next to my mother-in-law, about where I could find a job. Marc knew I liked to cook. Growing up in Yucatan, you don't eat a lot of extravagant ingredients. You cook from the farm with cilantro, tomatoes, habaneros, salt, black pepper, lime, garlic, all that gives a lot of flavor to the food. And that's how I learned to cook with my mom. Marc really liked my cooking. And he really liked my attitude, I guess.

     Marc had just sold his company. He's a tech guy, and he sold his company and he was investing in other companies. He said, When I go to in Texas for work, I see all these food trucks. Why don't you open a food truck? And then I went home, opened the computer, and I saw that a food truck costs about $100,000, but there's another option, a trailer. The following weekend, I went to Mark's house and I'm like, Hey, Mark, you remember this idea? A food truck is $100,000. The other option, a trailer, is $20,000. And he's like, Oh man, this is so cool. We can make your breakfast tacos and everything. And I'm like, Yeah, well, I don't have any money. And he’s like, Dude, you really want to do it? I'll give you the money and you run it.

     You’ve got to be kidding me, right? Nope, he said let’s do it. He helped me open the business. We decided on the name District Taco because we thought we would sell in Washington DC. But we didn’t do our homework and didn’t know that they weren’t giving out permits for food trailers. But we already had the name so we kept it. We opened for business in Arlington, just outside DC, in late 2008.

     The first couple months we were selling only breakfast tacos, and that was not working because on the East Coast people didn't know anything about breakfast tacos. So I was like, I'm going to start making my mom's food and the recipes that I knew. I started making one different meal each day so my customers can have something new every day. And I started Tweeting and Facebooking, telling everybody what I was serving that day. That's how we started getting momentum. We went from 10 customers a day to 100 customers a day, then to 150 customers a day. I started hiring people to help me.

     But even though we were selling to 100 or 150 people, I wasn’t really making money. Yes I love the brand and everything, but I’m not making any money. Then one night I fell asleep while I was cooking the beans for the next morning, and I was so pissed, I could have burned down my house. I wanted to give up. I prayed. I was like, God, send me a message. I don't think this is working, what am I doing, wasting my time? And then my daughter started crying. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. Is this a message? I just started laughing. And I kept going. And then things start changing.

  I had a vision that someday I would have a restaurant. Then we had “Snowmageddon,” a huge storm, maybe four feet of snow or something. So I didn’t work for three or four weeks. And it was good because it gave me a little break and I was able to think about what I was doing. I decided it was time to open the restaurant. I made some calls and got some investors.

     We opened the first restaurant in 2010 in Arlington, and man, it was very successful. The Washington Post wrote about us. One thing that made us successful was that we understand who’s our customer. Our customer is the people that want to eat clean. A lot of the people who go to District Taco are conscious about their health. They want Mexican food, but they don't want tacos that have a lot of calories in it or fat.

     We have a small menu, we’re bringing the Yucatan flavor. We cook with a lot of pepper, habenero pepper. And we grill our meat in house, with marinades from the Yucatan. And we do the jitomate salsa. That’s very unique to Yucatan. It’s a very simple recipe and it tastes so good. And we have options for people who are vegan and vegetarian.

     We have 14 locations now and we’re starting to franchise. There’s a lot of opportunity out there.

     I’m happy to share my story because I just feel like maybe there's somebody out there struggling today, right? But you just got to continue. It's so easy to give up, let me tell you that. But if you don't give up, you'll find out what could happen.

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