Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff Mejia.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I became a respiratory therapist in 2007. Working in a pediatric unit was very rewarding and I enjoyed it but I always felt like something was missing. Since I was a kid, I always had some kind of “side hustle”, whether it be deejaying at house parties or selling cds on the side. Being a respiratory therapist was great but I always felt that I could achieve more for my self and my family. Being Filipino, food is a big thing. It’s like an unwritten rule that if you have company over, you feed them. If you go to a party, bring a dish. If you get good grades, you go out to eat and celebrate. If you’re throwing a party, you must have a feast with tables of food that some can only imagine. Coming from a big family, I was always around good quality cooking. Seeing my mom cook in the kitchen with my aunts and uncles was a normal thing. Safe to say my cousins and I grew up knowing good food. I would help out a little bit as a kid in the kitchen but I was always the one on the grill. I would watch my dad and uncles grill all the time cause thats where everyone was at during the party.
When I got older, my mom taught me how to marinade the meats with our family recipes. When my friends and I would have get together, I would bring some of the bbq and cook it at the party. I slowly became to be known to my friends that if there was a party, I was bringing bbq. One of my friends said one day, “why don’t you sell it?”. I never thought of selling my bbq before. People started asking me a little more often the same question. A few months later, I did my first order for a friend and the response I got was great! Everyone loved it! thats when I started to think, “can I really sell this on a regular basis?”. I started to do a few more catering orders of my bbq a couple of times a month. By word of mouth, more people started hearing about it and started ordering more. After a few months, my wife and I thought of a business name and decided to create a menu and give it a try and see if people would order bbq plates from us. We opened up an Instagram and posted our menu.
The very next day, the orders started coming in. We were surprised by how many people ordered. The support we were getting was unreal. As the days went by, the more orders we were doing, the more people were hearing about us. We started getting text messages and DMs from people in different cities and county’s asking if we ever do pop up locations where they can buy our food. At this time, we were just doing pick up orders and deliveries in our city of Bellflower. Thats when we knew we had to expand and let people all around know who we were and what food we offered. We were excited for people to try our traditional Filipino bbq skewers and lumpias (Filipino egg rolls). I knew this is what I wanted to do so we got our business license, insurance and health permits and it was on! Our very first event was an underground old school festival. The turnout was great with good feedback. Next month we did the beer and food festival which was only our second event but had a turnout of 5,000 plus people. It was a hectic event cause we’ve never served so many people but we made it out alive and again the response we got was great. We also started doing farmers markets and city night markets like Friday night paramount which we still currently do every first Friday of the month in downtown paramount. We were blessed with many opportunities to have the chance to cater food for radio stations like 93.5k day, power 106, island block radio and Real 92.3 radio station.
We have also had the opportunity to personally cater for LA radio legend, Big Boy and West Coast legendary rapper, The Game. We were also featured in a “send foodz” Friday night paramount episode on the thrillist channel on YouTube which is hosted by timothy de la ghetto and David so. Having those opportunities helped us and our food to become even more noticed. We were happy and thankful for the opportunities that helped us be able to show people how passionate and how much we care about our culture and food. We began to get more opportunities to be a part of some different events all around Los Angeles and Orange County. We were doing food markets at hospitals, farmers market, night markets a few times a week. We were also apart of the 626 night market o.c. edition. That was a three day night market that had an attendance of 50,000 plus people. We plan on doing that event every year. Currently, our catering orders still keeps us busy. We have a Monday night market every Monday in downtown long beach. Every first Friday of the month at Friday night paramount. We pop up at a few breweries as well. I guess we can say our weekly schedule always has a few spots you can find us at whether it be our regular night markets, breweries or special events. There will always be somewhere you can find us to get a taste.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
From the beginning, it was a struggle because I didn’t know how to get a business license or health permit. I had to learn it all myself by doing my own research and figuring it out. Some may think it’s easy and you can just pop up and start selling food but there’s way more to it. I had to get a health permit which consists of a lot of paperwork and steps you have to do before getting approved. Then we had to find markets that we could set up and sell our food at. Going from delivering catering trays to doing night markets, festivals and big events were for sure a different game. There were so many things we had to get to be compliant with health regulations and event regulations as well. I had to take a managers food certification class and having no education in that area, I felt like I was in a different world. Learning all about sellers permits, insurance, and legal forms I had to complete were overwhelming at times but I knew this is what I wanted to do. Learning how much product to buy and how to gauge on how many potential sales you can do was a challenge at first.
Figuring out ways to promote our food and to have people come out and try it was also difficult but once they did come out and try it, they loved it and kept coming back for more at our different events. We got so busy that there were times we literally worked all day and slept for 2 hours or sometimes have sleepless nights getting ready before a big event. We were happy we were busy but we still had to make time for our family and kids and that was tough in the beginning having to run a new business and make family time. Some of the markets we did in the early stages weren’t always good. Sometimes there were little to no foot traffic of people and we took big loses on food that we couldn’t sell. We learned to choose the right people and events to work with because the food game is cutthroat and some people’s intentions for you are solely for themselves and not for the good of the vendors or markets that people work hard in. From staffing people on the schedule to dealing with demands from market managers, health inspectors and customers, it has been a crazy ride so far but worth every minute. We have learned a lot and we know we have much more to learn and accomplish and were excited and ready for it all.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Taste Of The Pacific – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
Taste Of The Pacific is a professional, licensed and health permitted Filipino food caterer and food pop up vendor. We specialize in Filipino style bbq skewers and lumpias. Were known for our bbq and lumpias and the fact that you know your close to our booth case we’re always playing old school hip hop and r&b to set off the good vibes. At our company, we are mostly proud that we truly represent our culture and believe in ourselves so much that we left careers that we weren’t happy at to pursue our dreams that make us happy and we’re giving ourselves a chance to prove everyone wrong that thought we couldn’t get this far. What sets us apart from others is our family recipes that we take much pride in. We never take short cuts and always provide our customers with the highest quality ingredients and products. All of our bbq skewers and lumpias are handcrafted one by one. Our signature bbq sauce is one of a kind and after one taste you’ll see why everyone keeps coming back for more.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Future plans are to add a few menu items that we have had in the works and to expand to more cities doing pop up events as well as multiple booths in different locations so we are more available in different cities. We look forward this year to continue with some of the bigger festivals and events that we have done in the past like the 626 night market.
Contact Info:
- Phone: 5622398102
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @taste_of_the_pacific
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/TasteOfThePacificLA/
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