Today we’d like to introduce you to Naty, Griselda and Frank Estrada.
Naty, Griselda and Frank, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
In March of 2018, the Papa Pancho’s Tacos was born. In Feb 2018, it started with a small conversation to start a side hustle for extra money. Griselda my sister in law who is the founder called me and told me that she wanted to start a food taco catering business with the tax money since I (Naty) was unemployed I told her that I would love to partner up. She came to the house later that day and cooked fish tacos for us (Frank and Naty), we were so hooked. They were so bomb. The taco started with a beer battered fish strip topped with mango pico de gallo, shredded cabbage, chipotle habanero cream, and the traditional white baja cream on a yellow corn tortilla. After seeing that there was not much of a competition in the catering world that cold do fish and shrimp tacos. Later that week we had all pitched in to buy a $800 taco cart that had a deep fryer and flat top. We immediately jumped on working on the name and logo.
As a family, we were going through a tough time because we had just found out that Griselda and Frank’s dad had a terminal illness, we wanted to honor my father in law and name the company after him. Since he was my father in law, I would always call him “Papa Pancho” Griselda thought it would be memorable to name it after him since he was a tacquero in Mexicali and he always wanted his kids to start a taco business. Less than two weeks we had the cart, we finalized toppings on the taco, brand name, logo. We created an event on Facebook to invite all of our close friends to introduce to them our new venture, that day we sold over 300 tacos in our front yard in Norwalk. We knew we had something really good and we decided to really focus on the company. We started doing pop-ups in Norwalk and in Moreno Valley. We all were raised in Moreno Valley so we have a lot of family and friends. Shortly after, we started getting private catering request. Our clients wanted us to start adding meats to our catering packages, our most popular catering package is the Surf N Turf package, this package includes Fish and Shrimp beer battered tacos, two choices of meat tacos, cilantro lime rice, black beans, and Micheagua.
We reached out to a foodie influencer by the name of “thehoodfoodie” he was our first influencer that we worked with and he really supported us since the beginning, so we named our surf n turf burrito after him, we now call it “TheHoodFoodie” Burrito. We started expanding our food menu and adding more items; Shrimp Quesadilla on a green flour tortilla & Shrimp Fries. We then even started to reach out to breweries and see if we could use their beer for our batter, they loved the idea. Telco was the first and ever since we have done these joint collaboration with 818 brewery and Brewjeria.
Lokels in DTLA approached us to see if we were interested in doing a rotating kitchen partnership, we started that venture in early 2020, unfortunately the location where we were at closed due to Covid.
We are still focusing on private catering, we sell our trio sauces, and we do curbside pick up out of our house in Norwalk and in Moreno Valley. We are so grateful for all the love and support of our followers. They are the reason why we are still out there.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
No, it has not been a smooth road. Since Griselda and Frank work, most of our pop-ups and private caterings have to be on weekend only. We are trying our best to be consistent in private caterings and to do more pop-ups but Covid has really slowed us down. When we were in Lokels in DTLA, I (Naty) took a leap of faith to focus on growing the brand and did Taco Tuesday, Wed, Thurs and Friday’s, unfortunately we had to close down due to covid.
Please tell us about Papa Pancho’s Tacos.
Naty, since I’m not working, I pretty much handle catering inquiries, manage food inventory, manage catering events, invoicing, social media, and customer service.
Frank and Griselda, since they both work they are the ones that help me do the catering events and prep the food for certain events.
We are known and specialize in the beer battered fish and shrimp tacos.
We are proud of how much the 3 of us have grown in the last 2 1/2 years. Our business has grown organically through word of mouth.
What sets us apart from others is that in the catering world, we are not your basic taquero. We offer meats and beer battered tacos. Our toppings have a Cali gourmet twist and our sauces are handcrafted. We don’t do basic aguas frescas, we have Miche-aguas. Our micheaguas are rimmed with our family handcrafted chamoy’s and tajin. Our most popular agua fresca is the cucumber lemonade.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I honestly don’t think we would have done anything differently because we have learned so much through the obstacles and the mistakes along the way. The 3 of us come from different work backgrounds and we had to learn about the food industry from going through the motions. I am very proud of us, we still have a lot to learn but we love it.
Pricing:
- Fish and Shrimp tacos $4 each
- Shrimp Quesadilla $9 (13″ flour tortilla”)
- Surf N Turf Burrito $11 (comes with fish, shrimp, asada and our toppings)
- Micheagua $3
- Surf N Turf Catering Packages $16 Per Person
Contact Info:
- Phone: 951-897-3868
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: papapanchostacos
- Facebook: papapanchostacos
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