How I Built This with Guy Raz - Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Long before founding Torchy’s Tacos, Mike Rypka was a troubled teenager trying to outrun his own self-destruction. Growing up around addiction and falling into heavy drug use himself, Mike���s future looked bleak—until he got clean and found refuge in kitchens. Cooking gave him structure, purpose, and eventually, a career.After years working in restaurants and corporate kitchens, Mike decided to take a risk on something smaller: a food truck on a street corner in Austin. In 2006, he launched Torchy’s with nothing but a dream, a fiery logo, and a menu full of bold flavors. That humble truck became the start of something much bigger. Today, Torchy’s is a national chain with more than 130 locations and annual sales topping $300 million. And through all of it, Mike has remained sober—more than three decades and counting.This episode was produced by Carla Esteves and edited by Kevin Leahy, with research by Katherine Sypher and music by Ramtin Arablouei. Our audio engineers were Patrick Murray and Gilly Moon.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail]. Sign up for Guy’s newsletter at guyraz.com and on Substack. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. We were on a little spot on Fifth Street and the landlord there, he never gave us a contract for what he wanted for rent. Like we had kept coming to him and asking him like, hey, we need to figure something out.

We don't want to stay here for free. We got to pay you something, like help us out. And he gave us some crazy, like, $10,000 or $15,000 bill that we had no clue that was even coming. And he's like, well, you've got two days to pay it or you're out of here. Wow. We didn't have the 10 or 15 grand to pay him. And he literally just cut off our electricity in the middle of lunch. He just came in.

What do you mean he could he, like, pulled the plug? Now he came with one of his guys. and use bulk cutters and literally cut off the power. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Mike Ripka went from dropping out of high school and dodging drug dealers to building one of the biggest, baddest taco chains in America, torches.

If you met Mike Ripka when he was a teenager, you'd conclude pretty quickly that he was going nowhere. Mike, as you will hear, was a total mess. And yet, he would go on to build one of the fastest growing taco chains in America with over 130 locations and a business that now does over $300 million in sales a year. So you might call this a redemption story. Now, I know that can sound a little cliched and predictable, The truth is, to get from where he was to where he is didn't happen because of miracles. It happened because Mike Ripka made a decision.

He decided he didn't want to be a screw-up. He didn't want to be a victim. And the path from rock bottom to where he is now didn't happen overnight. Mike would spend decades grinding it out in kitchens across the U.S. And in those kitchens, he didn't just learn how to cook for lots of people. He learned how to manage inventory and staff and customers. But by the time Mike hit his early 30s, he was out of work, broke, and trying to figure out how to make money. The answer came in a secondhand barbecue trailer that he bought and turned into a single taco truck in Austin.

One truck, one man, and years of early mornings and late nights turned into a massive success story called Torchise Taco. And it happened in spite of, or maybe because of Mike's serious struggles as a teenager, struggles that landed him in a military academy and then eventually in rehab. Mike Ripka spent most of his childhood in northern Virginia. By the time he was eight, his parents had split and his dad had moved out of the country. His mom worked long hours as a journalist, plus weekend shifts in retail to make ends meet. From a young age, Mike was around grown-ups who smoked and drank. heavily, and it wasn't long until he started experimenting himself.

I just, I wanted to feel better, you know, and I didn't really have an outlet or someone to go to to help me feel better. And so I saw people drinking and doing other things and smiles on their face, and I want some of that, you know. I can remember, even at the age of five, being at a party and there was a keg off to the side and I grabbed some friends and we went and ran over and stuck our head under the keg and drank from it. I used to sneak drinks from my parents' glasses of wine and beer when they'd go wash the dishes. I didn't love the taste of alcohol. I think most people don't, especially when you're young. But I think the thing I loved was that feeling of when the buzz was coming on. And that was sort of just this feeling of calmness. Hey, everything's going to be

okay. And when you're a kid and you're in a lot of pain, like anything that's going to help soothe that, you're going to go after more. You were, I mean, it's, it's sort of this strange kind of dichotomy. Because on the one hand, you were a very good athlete. You played, I think you played baseball and you played football. You were a pitcher. You were a starter on the football team. So you were going to practice and playing. You were also like using drugs like crack cocaine. I mean, at one point, I read about a drug dealer who had basically pulled a gun on you because you owed him money. Yes. And you had to find a way to pay him. You found some old savings bonds that were saved up for you. And you grabbed those and like threw him out of him to

basically save your life. Yeah, I still don't. know today how I was able to cash him being under 18, but somehow I did, and I would go to this bank, and I think I went through $40,000 worth of savings bonds and, you know, probably six months and crack and drugs and everything else. I guess the tipping point for your mom was she found out that you hadn't gone to school for like 45 straight days and basically made you get drug tested and you came back just on fire, like all light lit up, a positive for like several different drugs. Yeah. And put you into your first treatment facility. Yeah, I was in 10th grade. I was 15. I think I had LSD, PCP, crack cocaine, marijuana, and alcohol in my system.

So my mom obviously freaked out. And then they obviously knew I needed more help and that's how I ended up in Louisiana. So I went to a place called Opportunities down there. You would stay there for a few months, I think. I was there for about nine months. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. And so this is your sophomore into your junior year. And miraculously, you kicked it.

You were able to come out of there totally sober. Yeah, I struggled some in the beginning. I'd run away from there twice, and I'd used quite a few times when I was in there. And something just changed. And, you know, I found some help and decided to actually start listening to what they were saying. And really kind of realized, like, oh, crap, I really do have a problem with this stuff. Like, I can't control it. and my mother was coming down in the next two weeks with the sheriff to basically go take me to jail

because she wasn't going to allow me to go back on the streets. And I had a bunch of charges that were still holding over my head. These were charges for illegal drug possession and... Yeah, drugs and car theft and things like that. Wow. And so, I don't know. Something changed. and I started showing up and doing all the stuff that they were telling me to

and not because I felt I had to because I wanted to. And within that two weeks, they said, hey, let's give this guy a second chance. I think he really wants it now. And so I got to stay at the treatment center instead of go to jail. You get back to the D.C. area, to Virginia and finish out high school. you did manage to. And during, I guess, the time when you came back, you started working in a restaurant first as a dishwasher and then you got a chance to be in a line cook. I mean, were you already by the time you were a senior in high school thinking about a career in food or was it just a job to do?

A little bit of both. I loved working in restaurants. What I loved about it was I didn't have to think. Yeah. And anyone who struggles with alcohol and drugs, like, thinking's kind of your worst enemy. Your mind doesn't wander, right? Because you've got a purpose. You know, you've got to either wash the dishes or if you're line cooked, you've got to, you know, do the prep or you've got to work on your station, right? It's like almost like this automatic kind of, it's like being in a factory. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have time to think and you're just, you know, on to the next thing, onto the next thing. And there's a rush from it, you know. There's nothing. better when you're a chef or a cook of like going through a really hard Saturday or Sunday and getting your butt kicked and like actually succeeding on the other side of it. So how did you, I mean, your senior year of high school or, you know, how did you start to get jobs cooking? I mean, you weren't trained. You got, I think you eventually got a job at a

golf club in Springfield, Virginia, where you were like cooking for, as an 18-year-old, how did that, who showed you what to do? So I had a mentor. His name was Brian. He was the executive chef there. He kind of took me under his wing. But I don't know. I just, I fell in love with it.

And, you know, I almost got fired because my knife skills were just horrible. And I was kind of just anxious in the kitchen, so I was always dropping stuff and kind of not getting it together. And he finally had one last stern talk with me, and I turned it around. And he started really working with me and showing me things. And I can remember him giving me a lot of advice around just, hey, if you want to do a career in this, like, you know, your first five, ten years, like, don't stay anywhere more than two years. like learn as much as you can like get your butt out there working everywhere you can and you know learn learn learn and so it was really really helpful all right so here you are just starting out in life you're sober you've got it together and you're getting obviously some

experience in the kitchen but then i i guess that you actually started attending some college classes right like what what were you thinking that you would do at that point so i i i almost went to, well, I did. I went to a community college to start to become a counselor. And I thought maybe I'll be a substance abuse counselor because I like, I love helping people. But two months into my semester, I literally woke up in the middle of the night and I was like, I had this thought of like, what the hell are you doing? Like, you need to be a chef. You need to be in restaurants. Don't worry about it. You're going to be fine. And so I, trusted that. And I woke up that morning and ran downstairs and I was all excited and told my mother.

And I said, I'm dropping out of school. And she said, the hell you're not. And she made me finish my semester, but we went toward a bunch of culinary schools that next couple months. And I ended up at Johnson of Wales down in Miami. This is 1994, I think around 94. You started Johnson & Wales. It was a two-year program, right, in culinary arts. And so you get your degree at Johnson Wales. And then I think right after you went and got a bachelor's degree in hospitality management. So were you thinking, I mean, do you remember around that time what you thought you might want to do? Did you think I want to run restaurants or I want to run kitchens?

I want to cook, all of that. Did you have a sense of what you thought you wanted to do? Not horribly. I didn't know sort of exactly what direction I was going to take, but I knew I wanted to be in kitchens. I loved cooking. I love being a chef. And I also knew that, like, at some point, I'd love to start my own thing. And I knew even at that age, like, I never wanted to do something that was like super fine dining. I wanted to do something that. I wanted to do something. that was more kind of for the masses, affordable, you know, sort of street food type something. So I had that early on inkling that, you know, at some point, if I could, I'd love to start my own place. All right. So you graduate from Florida International, and I think one of the first jobs you get is that actually at a five-star restaurant, Mark's place in Fort Lauderdale. And five-star, this is tricky because. There's Michelin and this, and there's five diamonds, and what does five star mean?

Somebody gave five stars, but it was a fine dining restaurant, basically. And you were not the head chef. You were in charge of saute and sauces and making appetizers. So, and this is like the mid-90s when kitchens were not gentle places. I mean, today, everything's on TikTok and Instagram, so chefs have to be on there on guard. But what was the kitchen like? There. It was rough. Actually, while I was still in school when I worked at March Place, it was before I graduated. Super rough. I can remember dodging many a saute pans flying at my head. And hot spatulas of pasta water getting thrown at you too. Yeah, it was rough. Lots of yelling, lots of screaming. There was a lot of, you know, getting your ass handed to you, if you will, in the kitchen. And just super intense, but it was a great learning experience.

Like, our menu changed every single day. And we were using ingredients from all over Latin America and the world. And I can just, you know, remember, like, holy cow, like, I didn't know you could do this stuff with truffles or salsophy root or real hearts of palm or just different things we did. So it was pretty impressive menu we had there. Yeah. Well, you would end up staying in South Florida for a couple years after you graduated, doing different jobs. But eventually, I think in 99, you go back to your sort of hometown area. You get a job at the World Bank.

And what did you do? I mean, you're what, 24, 25 years old? It was 22 at the time. 22. Wow. What was your job? So I started as an assistant manager, and my mom's now ex-boyfriend at the time helped me get the job. He got me an introduction to someone at Marriott who ran all the food service there.

So I got hired. And I showed up every day in a suit and a tie and kind of learning the ropes. And we fed 3,000 to 4,000 people a day from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. So that's a lot of bodies moving through in that time frame. It was a huge cafe set up kind of like a food court. There was about 12 or 13 stations. And each station represented a different area of the world. I mean, anything you can think of, we had it on our menu.

And two months into me being there, the chef left, and they came to a little old me at 22 and said, hey, do you? want to be the executive chef here. And I choked a little bit. And I said, hell yeah, I'll do it. And it was not easy in the beginning. I mean, I literally would get laughed at when I'd walk in the kitchen just because, you know, they're like, who's this young kid? What the hell does he know? Right, because you were in charge of like 75 people. And I read that like they would call you boss, but sort of like as a disparagement, like to not out of respect, but to be like, you know, because you were a kid. Yeah.

And there were these adults working in the kitchen, but you were essentially their boss. And they really didn't respect you. No, no, not in those first three, four months for sure. I can remember them, you know, setting up things to like for stuff to fall and, you know, making messes and just. It did sabotage you. Yeah, it did sabotage me. So, and so I learned, I was like, okay, this is hard. I need to figure this out.

And so the one advice I got was like really work beside your folks. And so I'd go in. I'd be there earlier than everyone and I'd leave later than everyone. So I had that going for me. And I would come in and I would set people's stations up for them so that when they got to work, like their cutting board was there, their knives were there, their aprons were there, their towels were there. And over time, just built this real sort of confidence like, hey, Mike's really got our back. And he actually does what he says he's going to do. And if I'm in

the weeds, like, he jumps in and really helps us. And so I started to really gain their respect. And then we really focused on how do we have fun in the kitchen and start laughing. And having a good time. You would last there about a year before you decide to move to Los Angeles in 2000. Yep, yep. So you're in L.A. for, I think, for about a year doing some work, cooking at MTV and then Disney for some time. And then you get a job in Houston in 2001 for a really, I'm assuming it was a really well-paying job. You go out to work for a very successful energy company called Enron.

2001, you moved to Houston to become the head chef for Enron. Yes. And again, am I right? It was like a well-paying, great opportunity? Great job. So they, yeah, I mean, Enron was the cat's meow back then. Rolling and dough. Rolling and dough.

The stock price was through the roof. Jobs getting created left and right. And I got hired to open this new, like, state-of-the-art. cafe that was going to have a full bake shop, homemade pasta, sushi station, cooked to order food in front of everybody. And so they were kind of using my expertise and skills from what I had already gained in all the different places I'd worked to be able to kind of create this very innovative fun menu to life in Houston, Texas for their folks. And so I got there. I started hiring people And then I guess it was about a month and a half, two months after that, that's when all the news broke about Enron.

You're talking obviously about the Enron scandal in 2001 where they're basically cooking the books, right? They were lying about, completely lying about their business. And it was a scam. And it all unraveled. And I think in a few months, it had gone from being one of the most valuable companies in the country to a totally bankrupt company. Yeah. that was a super challenging time. You know, I'd only been in Houston like four months at that point.

I'd moved everything and moved to Texas. And, you know, I'm watching this company just crumble by the day, basically. Like, they had their stock ticker on the escalator to the elevators. And every day, the price would just drop and drop and drop. And news cameras start showing. up and like it was it was a madhouse i guess the writing was on the wall and you knew that your job was was also um winding down yeah you by the end of that year you end up outside of austin working for dell yeah running their food um catering program and now you're in austin and you're

working at dell and tell me about dell i mean it it it seems like it was a pretty stable place to be yeah for sure i mean you know you got to remember um late 90s early 2000s del and was, you know, rocking and rolling. I ran all the food service over both campuses, and there was about 12 different cafes and different buildings.

And we also had a huge catering department that did tons of catering. So it was a big, big job and a lot of responsibility. I mean, I was in charge of about $10 to $15 million a year in food business. So a lot, especially at, you know, 25 years old.

Wow. And then after I'd been there about two, two and a half years, they really started making a lot of changes and taking a lot of the liberties away, and they really wanted things to be a lot more sort of the same across the board. And that's where sort of the taste of like, hey, why did I get in this business in the first? places because I love food. I love being creative. And so that's when I started getting back to

thinking about maybe different restaurant concepts or something that I could do that could be really fun and kind of create something different out there. Yeah, I mean, it's usually those moments, right, where you start to get itchy feet that are gift, right, where you start to get frustrated that that actually it's like a sign from from god or the gods or whatever you believe in which is maybe it's time to make a change and you did i mean you you were at adele for almost three years but then you i guess out of frustration left and and helped um start a new restaurant called lucy's bow yard you were brought on to kind of help but that closes and this is now it takes us to about 2006 you're now like 30 31 and

and trying to figure out the next step. And I guess you had a friend in Austin, a guy named Bill Roberts, who had a trailer, like a barbecue trailer that he had owned. And he said, hey, do you want to take this off my hands and, like, open up a taco truck or something? What's a story about that? So he had this old barbecue trailer, gotten it from his grandfather, and he couldn't – he was trying to sell it. It was just a, what was it, a smoker or a huge grill?

It was like a food trailer. Oh, okay. You know, kind of what you see, like, you know, carnivals or now what you see out there, you know, out. You can go inside. There's a door. There's a little kitchen in there. Yeah, there's a kitchen, the whole nine yards. And so, you know, he couldn't sell it.

And at that point, there wasn't really a food truck slash food trailer culture that you see nowadays in different cities. and definitely not in Austin. And I had gone to some banks before that for trying to do a breakfast concept, and they all pretty much laughed at me, you know, wrote big business plans. And, yeah, I didn't have any money. I didn't know people with money. And that's really kind of almost how you have to start a restaurant. You know, bank's not going to just take a bet on you and give you $600 grand to go open a

brick and mortar restaurant. And so he had this trailer and he's like, hey, what do you think about opening a taco stand? I thought he was nuts at first because, you know, there's tacos every, on every corner just about in Austin. And so I sort of did this taco tour all around Texas and around the border towns. And what I realized was like, man, there's some great tacos, but they're all kind of the same. They're all these sort of street style tacos. all great, but they're very similar. And I was like, well, I don't want to go replicate that, right? Like, these are history old recipes that these folks have been doing that have been handed down by grandma and cousins and aunts and everyone else.

Like, let's not try and compete with them. Let's go do our own thing. Like, take this, you know, vessel called the tortilla and let's go have fun with it. Right. Because, like, in L.A. where I grew up, like, you know, a taco. traditional taco would be like alpasteur or maybe like a little bit of, you know, carne asada with some onions and cilantro and that's it. Yep, yep.

Like that is it, right? Or, you know, pork tacos with bits of pineapple and some pickled onions. Yeah, yeah. And that's it. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, that's awesome. And I think, you know, that was like the opposite of what I wanted to do. Like, I wanted to take tacos and put fried chicken in them and fried shrimp and blackened salmon and brisket and, you know, all these different flavors that, like, let's go have some fun.

And that's sort of the idea behind Torchies and where it was born is just these gourmet street tacos. All right, let's taco. So 2006, you decide, all right, I'm going to do a taco truck. Yeah. And first of all, you call it Torchies. What's Torchies? What does that mean? So that actually came from Bill. We were struggling with the name. And he woke up one morning, called me super excited. He's like, dude, I got the name. Like, we got to meet. Let's go get coffee. And he had remembered something that happened in the 90s where he probably had a little too much to drink one night. and was at a late-night taco place that was here in Austin called Rosie's El Paso. They were famous for their El Pasoos. And he sort of had this vision of this old airstream trailer with neon torches with flames coming out of the Y.

And he hadn't remembered that memory until literally that night or that morning when he came and he said, I've got the name. And when he said it, we both looked at each other and like, That's it. That's the name. That should be Torchies. Torchies just felt like very right, very inspired and like, no, this is it. Like torch fired meats or, but it could be a guy. It could be like the cook's name's Torchy. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, and it wasn't, and that was the other thing. Like, I never wanted a place that, like, had my name on it. because I always felt like the place needed to be bigger than me. Mike's taco is just, eh.

No, Mike's to do it. It doesn't do much for me. Yeah. I'm curious. So, all right, he has this trailer, and he suggests that you do, and you guys have agreed to do a taco truck. So how does it work? Are you going to be partners?

I mean, did you need a whole lot of money to, I can't imagine you needed that much money to start this thing, but I imagine he was a co-owner with you. Yeah, he was a co-owner. So I ended up taking a loan on my house and using that to help kind of get the trailer painted and get our logo on there and buy some of the equipment. And then he used some of his money to kind of help set up our first spot and, you know, do some of the landscaping and things like that. And where did you, I mean, where did you start? You set up on a corner in Austin and what just like, how does that work? Do you have to get a permit from the city?

Like, can you just set it up anywhere? Yeah, see, definitely need a permit. They did have mobile vending permits back then. And we needed to have a commissary kitchen. So we figured that out. And I got a buddy who I knew owned a restaurant to help us use their kitchen to start. And so yeah, we opened on South First, just south of downtown, in this undeveloped lot. There was a guy that was selling snow cones there before that went out of business,

who I had asked originally, and he didn't want to share the spot with me. And then I came back a month later, and the poor guy was packing his stuff up. And he gave me the landlord's number, and I called him. You know, came to find out that whole spot was in a floodplain, so you can't build on it. And so having a food truck there is actually, like, the perfect use for it. So, all right. Let's just talk about food trucks for a moment. Because 2006, food trucks were not yet cool, right?

It was like it was construction sites. They were, you know, trucks that would go to a few construction workers or maybe you'd, like, go to a carnival, like one of these carnivals and there'd be like a food truck. But it wasn't, this was not something that a trained chef from Johnson and Wales would be doing at that time. Yeah, yeah. My, I remember my friends going, what the hell are you doing open in a food truck? Do you like, how is that even going to work? And, you know, I don't know what I just, and I guess I think when, you know, folks that are entrepreneurs or that have passion about a business, like, you just won't hear no. And I can remember people sort of challenging me.

And I just like, look, this is what I can afford. And this is what I'm going to do and I'm going to figure it out. And the owner of the land where you were set up, basically, I think he was letting you kind of squat there for free, if I'm not mistaken. But then he was like, okay, now you got to pay. Yeah, yeah. So we talk about South first because that was really kind of. of where we found our home. So before that, we were on a little spot on Fifth Street. And the landlord there, he never gave us a contract for what he wanted for rent. Like, we'd kept coming to him and

asking him, like, hey, we need to figure something out. We don't want to stay here for free. We got to pay you something, like help us out. And he gave us some crazy like $10,000 or $15,000 bill that we had no clue that was even coming. And he's like, well, you got two days to pay it or you're out of And so we didn't have the 10 or 15 grand to pay him. And he literally just cut off our electricity in the middle of lunch. He just came and what, what do you mean? He like pulled the plug? Now he came with one of his guys and used bulk cutters and literally cut off the power.

He cut the power line in the middle of lunch? Yes, he cut the power line. What did you do? Did you run out and go, what the hell are you doing, man? Yeah, I did not want to get in a fight with him. And so I had to kind of like close up shop that day. And we ended up for a week literally cooking out of Bill's driveway. We took the trailer and we hooked up the power to the trailer in his house,

which was totally illegal at the time. But, you know, we were trying to stay in business and, you know, keep some cash coming. When we come back in just a moment, how partners, publicity, and $15,000 were of pumpkins help Torchis grow into one of the most popular taco chains in America. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2006, and Torchies Tacos is just a single food truck parked of South First Street in Austin, Texas. Meanwhile, founder Mike Ripka has gone from managing huge kitchens at the World Bank and Dell

to toiling away in a trailer pretty much doing, everything himself. Yeah, so seven days a week, 5 a.m. to midnight. Every day, I'd start. I'd open everything up. I'd get the prep going. I'd get the gas grills going. I'd welcome the employees.

The one or two employees I had at that point, you know, pretty much every day you had to go shop. And so, because it just wasn't enough space. And we weren't doing a lot of volume either. And I didn't have some big runway budget of like, you know, hey, here's half a million dollars in the bank for your first six months of operating costs. Like, I basically took a loan on my house and maxed out my credit cards and got the doors open. And so, like, every dollar that came in the register mattered. I imagine you were going to be making a lot less money than you made a Dell.

Yeah, I mean, no money, at least at the beginning. I didn't get a paycheck, I think, for the first two years I was in business. And your menu was pretty limited, right? I mean, you did just a few things initially. It wasn't like, I don't even think it was just tacos, right? It was like fajitas. What were you making? Yeah, so we started with kind of a build-your-own breakfast taco.

Like chorizo and egg? Yeah, chorizo egg, bacon. So breakfast tacos are real big in Austin. And so I wanted to have that. And then, you know, we started with kind of the basics. We had a barbacoa, a green chili pork. And then we had a chicken and steak fajita. And then you could make a burrito or get a fajita plate.

And our first Taco the Month was called the trailer park, which is our number one selling taco today all these years later. Fried chicken, green chilies, lettuce, pico. there's some shredded jack and cheddar cheese, and it comes with a creamy Poblano ranch. And if you want it trashy, you can take off the lettuce and put queso on there. And so when you launched it, right,

in the first couple weeks or months, from what I've seen, I've looked at a map of this place. I mean, maybe it's a little different now, but 2006, it doesn't, it was, there was nothing around there. Like, who went there? What, did you have customers? Who had, were there, were there just hours that would go by with nobody coming up and ordering any food?

Yeah, it was, it was very tough, you know, again, so there's a stigma of like, at that point, like Roach Coach, right? Like, is it even safe to eat in a trailer? You know what I mean? Like, is it safe in there? Is it inspected by the, by the food, you know, whatever. Is it safe, right? Yeah. Now, the one thing I had going for me was we were on the right side of South First.

So all the morning traffic going to downtown was passing right by our trailer. And so we were perfect for breakfast tacos. The question was, how do you get them to turn in there in the first place? And so I learned real quick, like, how to do grassroots marketing. So I had a red VESPA. And I would make chips and salsa because it was cheap. and print out a ton of menus, and I would go hit every Tom Dick and Harry, dentist office, office, office, you know, tire shop, lube place, salon, wherever they'd let me in, and I'd go hand out samples of chips and salsa, give them my menu. And we started delivering very early on.

And when you say we was you and who else? So it was me, and I had a couple of. cook named Juan, and I had a delivery driver. We took the orders by phone. There was no DoorDash or Uber Eats at this point, and we'd go deliver them on the VESPA. So I had a setup on the back. You know, we'd put all the food in there and go hand-deliver it to folks. You know, today, if you were to start this, right, you'd have like a branding agency that would say, okay, you want to call this like chef-driven menu, right? Like, you weren't just some dude who was just making tacos.

Like, you really came from the culinary world. Did you advertise that in any way? Did people know that? Or were you just, I mean, how did you differentiate in the minds of consumers? There's a lot of taco options, even in Austin in 2006. There were a ton of taco options. So why would, like, what made your, how did you convey that your place was different? You know, I don't know that there was some big communication.

plan around it. It was really about just getting my food in people's mouth. So we did lots of events. We did lots of giveaways. I would go donate food to a school, show up at their carnival at the school, and serve tacos and give some of the proceeds back to the school. So we just really got involved and inundated with the community was really how we got the word out. out and how we got people to know who and what we are. So I guess by the end of that summer, you started to get some traction. What was your lifestyle like? I mean, here you are, you're in the early 30s.

You had, you would just come off pretty steady jobs where I'm assuming you had pretty steady hours and decent life balance. Now it's you and Juan. And I'm imagining you're working at least 50, 60, more hours a week? Oh, 100 hours a week, literally, 5 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week. Wow. Yeah. How did you cope with that? Did you like it? Did it get you down? Did it, I don't know. It was stressful, but I had my eye on the prize, right? Like I... What was the price? Well, the prize was to really get this business off a ground so it could sustain itself.

It wasn't about... Because you were not profitable yet. No, not even close. And the hard thing for us was just the sales. And early on at that south first spot, my partner Bill comes to me with this bright idea and lets me know that we've got an 18-wheeler truck of pumpkins coming. I told him he was nuts, but it was around Halloween time. And unbeknownst to me, he puts, you know, I think it was around $15,000 worth of pumpkins on our business Amex card.

And, you know, his thought was like, hey, let's do a pumpkin patch and help drive some business to the trailer. And so we opened this pumpkin patch and I can remember just, you know. On the premises? Right next to the trailer, yeah. And the idea of the pumpkin patch was to presumably to attract people to the taco truck. Yeah, sell some pumpkins and get them to try some tacos while they're there. And so we opened this pumpkin patch. And we're doing fine.

We're selling some pumpkins. But, you know, here it is. It's about October 15th. And, like, I still have, like, I don't know if you know how many pumpkins coming to 18-wheeler, but it's 44 pallets of pumpkins. Like, it's a lot of pumpkins. Thousands of pumpkins. Yeah.

And I'm, like, counting the days, like, once Halloween, Hines hits. And so one day, it was like a Tuesday or Wednesday, this news fan shows up and like, hey, we'd love to interview you and do a story. And we're like, what are you talking about? He's like, you guys are one of the only people that have pumpkins left in Austin. And we want to do a story about it. There was a pumpkin shortage this year. I was like, really? I was so busy. I wasn't paying attention to the pumpkin shortage out there. I was just trying to make tacos and make a living. And so he does this interview and like within two weeks we end up selling all the pumpkins that we had bought and got some new customers, not tons, but definitely got more

exposure to who we were. I can remember just thinking like, holy cow, that was a bet that really could have gone wrong if that didn't happen. Yeah. So I'm curious about overall sort of financial situation. I mean, you know, on the one hand, you're grinding, you're trying to get to sustainability, but what about, and it was just the two of you who were financing or funding this thing, you and Bill. I mean, were there, do you remember any specific moments where you weren't sure you were going to make payroll? I mean, damn near every week it felt like, you know, there were definitely weeks where I was like, holy cow, it's Wednesday, and I need like $3,000 to make payroll, and we've got $1,000 in there. Like, how's this even going to happen?

And we'd get these little breaks, right? I'd get a call, and I'd have a catering for like a Thursday night to go cater for hittas for a riverboat or, you know, there may not quite be enough in the bank, but I knew it was going to be a great sunny weekend, and I'd cut the checks hoping they didn't bounce, and we'd get enough sales over the weekend to cover the float and not get in trouble, but it was real, real dicey at that point. How did you manage the stress of doing all of these things all the time, every day without a single day off?

It was a lot. Lots of coffee, lots of Red Bull, in terms of keeping awake. You know, I think the thing that I leaned on the most is, you know, I had this recovery background that, like, really kind of helped me. I'd been through rough times in my life, right? Like, I'd seen what darkness look like. And I knew that if I did the right things for the right reasons, whether the business succeeded or not, like, I was going to be okay. And that would give me enough strength and enough grit to, like, do it one more day, put one more foot in front of the other and just have some faith to, like, just keep doing what you're doing, Mike. It's almost like staying so busy that you couldn't stop and let your mind wander was like, well, you just sort of an extension of your ongoing recovery.

Yeah, yeah. It was about doing, you know, I like to say my job is to chop wood and carry water and eventually the house gets built, right? Like, if I don't chop the wood and don't carry the water, the house isn't going to get built. So, all right. So you are, you know, on South First Street, and 2007, you get some locals in Austin who want to make an investment. and and suggest, I guess, help you get a second truck. And this is just for the beginning of the process of a group of local people who want to invest in the business. I guess, Bill, your original partner decides to step away.

He gets bought out. And there's a couple that invests a little bit of money, Farrell and Rebecca Kubina or Cubana locals in Austin. And when they came to invest, what did they – Did you have a plan? How did that come about? So at this point, we were finally having some success. So before that happened, we got a big write-up in Austin Chronicle. And that really helped change things. So we were definitely on our way to like, we were having lines, 20, 30 people long every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Lunches were starting to pick up during the week. Dinners were getting better. And so we knew we like had something. And we figured that like we probably couldn't get enough money to open a restaurant yet. But maybe we could at least open a second trailer and kind of extend the brand a little bit.

And so did you, did you know these people who were interested? Like were they friends? Bill knew them. He had done business with them. So Farrell was a builder. So he built a lot of houses. in Austin, and they had a relationship because they would work together. Bill would do the landscape, and Farrell would do the house building.

So they had worked together quite a bit. And we knew that we were going to have to raise money to help open the second trailer because we were all tapped at that point. And so we brought Farrell on and showed them the finances and what we were doing, had them come try the food. And he was just blown away. He's like, man, I've never had tacos like this. Like, holy crap.

And his wife, Rebecca, thought he was nuts. But they were sort of serial entrepreneurs, right? And so they kind of knew the game. So having someone on the team that, like, knew about business that could, you know, help navigate some of the things that I was still learning on the fly was really helpful to have them kind of on the team. And to be able to, you know, help. finance the second trailer. So, and we took some of that money to kind of help just, I hadn't had a paycheck yet, right? And so I took a little bit of that cash and just kind of like kept my house

from getting foreclosed on and got caught up a little bit on some bills. All right. So there now, so you now have some investors. And so all of those people were now partners. It was the Farrell and Rebecca, and then a guy named Bob Gentry bought out Bill, your original partner. There was another guy involved named Jay. And with their help, not only were you able to open up a second truck, but by 2008, you were able to get a brick and mortar location. And let's just pause for a moment, because this is an important turning point, right? You have two years of grinding away and taco trucks, and now you've got a brick and mortar location. Doesn't mean the grind is going to end. No, for sure it won't. But at this point, now having some investors involved, are you guys starting to

articulate a vision of what you think this could be? Like, was it too early to talk about multiple locations, or were you already talking about that possibility? A little yes and a little no. Our first goal was we definitely, at first we kind of argued about like, hey, do we just open a bunch of trailers because they're cheap and we move them and I was very much against that because I was like, hey, look, this is a great way to start, but it's not a good way to sustain. It's very weather dependent. It's a lot of heavy lifting every day of like shipping food back and forth. And so I was really like, hey, we got to get a brick and mortar. I know it's expensive, but that's the way to do this. And it was a little bit of defense because our,

trailer location, we couldn't get more than a year lease. And every time the lease came up, our landlord wanted to double the rent. You know, he saw the lines and was like, I can make more money off these guys. And Farrell, being in real estate and construction, you know, had a real good eye for that. So we kind of put him in charge of like, hey, go find us the next spot that's somewhere close to here that, but not too close, but that like we could still capture our customers. And so that's how we found our South first spot. Okay. So now you've got this, the brick and mortar. And then, and two, you opened up two in 2008. Tell me a little bit about the look and the vibe. Like this is, this is just on the cusp of Austin. And forgive me,

because I hate to use this language, but like becoming more corporate, right? Like South by Southwest, still very indie. Like now you go, and it's still fun. Austin's still amazing, but it was still a little bit of a kind of a sleepy cultural town, right? With Austin City Limits and South by Southwest was still very kind of indie. Yeah. So, so the vibe, I think, right, like the whole, I think like the whole motto of Austin was keep Austin weird, right? Yeah. And so. So how did your, like, look and feel fit into that? We definitely had that vibe, especially early on. So a lot of used restaurant equipment, paint, a little bit of decor, not a whole lot in terms of, like, a super well thought out. Like, this is how the design's going to look. We did incorporate some of our colors from our logo. Your logo had a little devil.

It was like a devil with a toilet plunger in its mouth. Oh, no, with a pitchfork. A pitchfork. Okay, all right, I got you. Am I the first one to say that? Yeah, I haven't heard that one before. Tyler Plunker. Okay, it's a pitchfork. All right.

I got you. All right, sorry. No, you're good. Torchy, he's sort of my alter ego. When Bill and I first started Torchies, we were, even though we were just opening a taco truck, we definitely still wanted to have, like, a good brand. And we did a lot of talking about, like, great brands and what makes them special. And a lot of the good brands out there, like Nike has the swoosh.

Like, if you just saw the swish, you know, that's Nike. Starbucks has the siren and so on and so forth. And so we were like, well, what is that for Torches? And we talked about pitchforks and this and that. And I had the same kind of moment that Bill had when he came to me with the name. I like woke up in the morning super excited and I just had this idea of like it needs to be a little baby devil. A baby devil in a diaper. Yes.

And that was that was the premise of Torchies was we were a place to really come let your hair down, be who you are, be original, take all the stress of life and just come enjoy some things. damn good food. Like the little angel on my shoulder says, hey, you should probably eat the kale salad. It's healthy. You need to go work out. And Torchy, on the other hand, is like, fuck that. Drink a margarita. Have some queso and have a damn good taco. And that was that was sort of what Torchy is about. And as you sort of, once you had the brick and mortal locations, was the menu, I'm assuming it was expanded. I mean, you had, how were you coming up with different, like, you know, for example, I don't know, a taco with, like just the things that you would add to the taco. Like, you know, you've got a taco with carnitas, terriaki sauce, bacon, corn relish,

cotilla cheese. I mean, a lot of different cultures and flavors blended into that thing. How would you come up with those ideas? Very early on, me and Bill agreed, like, hey, we wouldn't do anything unless it came from an inspired place, which might sound a little hokey, but sometimes that meant that, like, it might take you a while to, like, come up with something because it didn't feel very authentic. And what I mean by that was it would be anything from, hey, I'm in the grocery store, and I see an ingredient like a miso paste, and it sparks an idea of like, ooh, I've had that with seabass. And what if I did this? And then And then how would I format that in a taco?

And what I've found is when I've allowed myself that space and time to do that, that like typically the stuff that wins, I nail on the first recipe. There's not a lot of like back and forth and testing and this and that. It's like you have that idea, that inspiration. You go in the kitchen and it all just kind of works and works out perfect. All right. Even with these two restaurants, from what I understand, Torchies was still not profitable. And one of the challenges is that when you guys are opening more locations in Austin, I think by the end of that, you had four locations.

And then 2010, you opened the first location in Dallas. And I think I read that you guys still could not get lines of credit. You couldn't get banks to give you lines of credit. And a lot, I mean, this is now the financial crisis, right? So of course it's going to be challenging. So I'm sure it was stressful that you were just kind of treading water, even now five, six years into this business. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was definitely a challenge.

And I think just like the thing that kept giving us hope was we were opening these locations and we were doing really good business. And at that point, we were really starting to capture. a lot of fans. And the reason we opened in Dallas is because we had people begging for us to come up there. And when we opened, they came out in droves. I mean, we had lines out the door for weeks and months when we opened our Dallas location. So we knew we had something. And part of growing a business isn't always that profitable, right?

Like you're constantly investing kind of to the next phase, which, you know, typically if you do it right, you kind of want to be a little overinvested ahead of yourself so that you've got the team that can execute it so that you can do it at a high level enough to make it work. When you opened that location in Dallas and then subsequent locations, how did you explain what the culture was to the team? Like, hey, everybody, we're opening this Torchies. This is what Torchise is. And you guys have to personify that, embody that. What was your explanation? So we had a handbook at that point. You know, so some of that, some of our cultures and values were in that.

We did about three weeks of training with those new employees. I was up there. All the partners were up there. We did lots of storytelling in terms of like, where we started, the kind of things we'd been through. We get our folks super involved in lots of tasting classes. And one of our big mantras is if it's not damn good, don't serve it. And so to really ingrain that culture of like, hey, like, you know, it's okay to not have

pico if your tomatoes aren't ripe. Like, just don't serve it, right? Like, a customer will understand, hey, we got a bad batch of tomatoes. today so we don't have pico versus, hey, let's serve yellow tomatoes in our pico that, you know, it's hard and tastes like crap, you know. So it's really about getting that buy-in from your folks, being consistent with your values in terms of, you know, making sure that people understand what's important every day. You know, we have what we call the, our winning formula, which is damn good.

damn good hospitality and damn good shifts. And damn good tacos is your trademarked motto, I should say. You trademarked damn good tacos. Yeah. And it came from our customers that said, damn, these tacos are good. What the hell are you putting in these things? You know, and we decided to add damn good

as really a guiding light of like, hey, this is the level it needs to be every day, every shift, every time when someone comes in here, it needs to be damn good. And when you focus on that and when you really drive that home with your folks, they're able to do that, you know, and you end up with a very passionate employee team member base that, like, cares about the food that, like, holds each other accountable when something's not right. And they bring a tasting spoon to the manager and make sure, like, hey, does, Is this Diablo sauce tastes right?

Are these beans good? And that kind of culture has to get cultivated, and you need to do it every day kind of without fail. When we come back after a quick break, a critic torches, the tacos, a rival chain shows up with copycat recipes. And Mike, he's out as CEO. But that's not the end of the story. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening. to How I Built This.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. So it's 2012 and Torchie's Tacos is up to 11 locations. Most are in Austin. Next came Dallas. And now they've just opened up in Houston. And a very prominent, respected food critic named Allison Cook, James Beard Award winning food critic comes to the restaurant and basically just like trashes the restaurant. She just says, you know, you guys have lost the magic, the ingredients aren't.

It's the quality has gone down. I wish they would focus more on, you know, quality rather than just expand, expand, expand. And that's not a good review to receive. No. And you did something pretty creative. You actually responded to her article in the comments section of the article. I, well, first off, before that, I called their office and said, hey, I'd love to talk. to Allison. I'm not trying to change the review, but I'd like to know, because one of her big complaints

was a busser kept trying to take her menu. And I don't know why our busser was doing that that day. I think he just was on autopilot, like clean the tables, clean the menus, like whatever he was thinking. And so I wanted to be able to coach that team member. And they would not let me talk to her. And that just really pissed me off. It's like, I'm not trying to change a review. I just want make our restaurant as good as I can. I'd like to know who it is so I can coach him. And so I responded and basically called her out and said, hey, look, you know, I'm going to be there in two days from 12 to two, bringing this article, and I'm going to be giving away this tacos as she breamed us on. And you can vote for yourself whether you agree with her or not. Because I just, I felt real passionate about it. our food and like, hey, you know, because it was obvious that like this thing the Busser was doing

is what kind of killed her experience. It wasn't the food. It wasn't, you know, she was recalling her memory from eating at the trailer under an oak tree in the middle of spring when it's 72 degrees out. Like, that's hard to compare that memory with, you know, being in a brick and mortar in Houston, right? Yeah. And so my point was, it's like, we haven't done anything to change the food. The food's just as damn good as it was in that trailer, if not better. And come on down and I'll prove it to you. You said, if you print out the article and bring it, we'll give you a free taco. Yeah, we'll give you a free taco. And so, and then you can, and then I want to hear your vote. And, and I think out of the 300 articles we got, only two people agreed with the article. So you can't please everybody.

But that's a pretty impressive vote change there. So yeah. I'll take it. Well, in her defense, I read the original review, and I feel like it was a tough love review. She was saying, I love Torchese, what's going on? And I, and so I think in her defense, you could say that it also, it must have perked you, it must have perked you up a little bit. And you must have made you think, well, what's going on at that restaurant? Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, and that's why I called her, because I wanted to know, like, hey, like, you know, give me some more details so I can, like, fix it.

right? Yeah. Okay. So you guys are still, but I think still not profitable, right? I mean, you're growing, but still it's getting tough. We're getting closer. We're starting to make some money at that point. We're, you know, I'm taking a paycheck. Farrell had, and Rebecca had starting to take in a small pay. And this is six years in, I should say. So it's been a grind. I mean, you were on a hamster wheel for six years already. Big time, big time. And so, you know, so we're starting to, you know, take a little bit of money and just from a, a paycheck standpoint, but we were definitely weren't taking any kind of like dividends or anything like that out. Mike, I want to ask you a personal question here, which I often ask, not in every case, but

we didn't mention that you had gotten married around 2008, and I think your marriage broke apart around 2011 or 12. All of this is going on. You're expanding, you're building the restaurants, and personally, you're going through this crisis. Yeah. We didn't mention that that also, you know, your mom had passed away a couple years before. Do you, I don't know, I mean, do you, again, marriage and partnership is complex. Relationships are complex. But I imagine that you working 100 hours a week couldn't have helped. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, by the time I met her, I was working less. I wasn't, you know, that 100 hours was really that first kind of year and a half. have two years. And I met her in 2008. And that same year, my mom passed away from ovaric cancer. So it was just really sort of, it was just a, you know, on one hand, I had this woman that was

potentially going to be my wife and, you know, was thinking about marriage. And then, you know, my mom passed away. So it was just, it was a really kind of weird and confusing time. And then also, you know, I'm like, I've got this business that's new that's like, you know, I'm starting to make a little bit of money. But, you know, it's just a lot of everything going on at once. And, you know, yeah, it was tough. We got married. Literally the same year we got married, we had our son. So it was like, boom, boom, get married.

have a kid all while, you know, I'm also trying to like manage growing this business. And there was just a lot of, a lot of challenges. And, and, you know, I think, you know, I definitely made some mistakes. You know, it was, it was tough, you know, it was tough trying to manage all that together. So, this is happening in the background. And meantime, you guys are growing and expanding. And then in 2013, there's another taco chain, another taco restaurant called the Texas Taco Company. And you start to see pictures on Instagram and on social media of fans at their restaurant. And it looks like, from your perspective, they're making the same exact things. They're literally copying your playbook.

I should mention that recipes are not copyright. It's not like a photograph or a book or, you know, or a patented invention. Like, unfortunately, recipes just aren't protected in the same way. But you guys decided to sue them for, I guess, copyright or some kind of infringement, trademark infringement. Tell me why you decided to do that. Well, we knew they had stolen our recipe book. So they had- You guys had an internal Taco Bible that you used in your kitchens, right?

Yep, yeah. Like a brand Bible for your tacos. Yeah, exactly, with all the recipes and everything in it. And it was a trade secret. Yeah, yeah. And so we had it on video. Now, the problem is by the time we got to court, we had lost that video, but we had enough other proof around, you know, their menu. I mean, every description was exactly the same.

The only thing they changed were the names of the tacos. They were doing the same exact fried chicken taco. Same exact stuff, you know, across the board. Luckily, they weren't executing it at all. So that, I think, saved us. But definitely a moment of like, holy shit, we got this great brand. We're doing these great things. And they were franchising, right?

Like, they opened one store and, like, immediately started franchising. And so. And you guys were not franchising. We were not franchising. Opening all of your own locations. And you continue to do that to this day. Yep. They were franchising and you felt like, oh, this is a potential threat.

This is a huge threat. They've got our food. They've got our recipes. Like, they could completely take over and we'd just be forgotten about in the wind. And this is our stuff. And so, yeah, we definitely went to the lawyers and the thing went on for about 18 months. But we were able to get them to close everything down. So thank goodness for that.

All right, 2017, you guys announced that a investment firm, General Atlantic, makes a significant investment, which is, I mean, it's a big deal. They're looking at your business and thinking, okay, we can really expand this. And now I imagine by 2017 you had 10 or 15 locations, I think, something like that. Oh, no, we were at 35 at that point. Oh, wow. Okay, so you had a lot. And, but with this deal, I imagine there was plans now to really expand this, like to turn this into a national, maybe even an international business chain. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think, you know, the, you know, two things we thought about. One was, hey, look, we've been busting our butt. You know, we don't even know, like, what we're worth or not worth as a company.

we didn't want to like step out, but it was also be nice to like take some chips off the table. Like we've, you know, restaurant, you never know, right? And we want to, if we're going to grow, like, we want the best shot to like do it right. And these guys have done this stuff before. And so we started talking to some people about, you know, hey, what does, what's a good way to accomplish two of those goals to take some chips off the table? but then also to continue to like expand and work in the business and, you know, not necessarily

write it off. And what we came to is like, hey, if you find the right private equity partnership, that can work out really well. And so we went through a whole bidding process and really landed on General Atlantic. And they've been great to work with. And just down to earth, they get the business, they get investments. And they had a great track record. So you now, I mean, now that there's outside investors, you know, professional investors, I should say, involved with you and your original team, there's a different set of pressures, right? And there's a board and it's 2018. And I gather that year, the board essentially asks you to step aside. From what I understand, they felt like you.

were not the right person to help scale the business anymore. And they brought in a quote unquote professional who had been the CEO of California Pizza Kitchen. He was an executive at Texas Roadhouse, a guy named G.J. Hart. Were you, I mean, clearly you did. You stepped down and you took on a different role. But were you okay with that decision? Were you relieved? Did you feel like, I really don't want to do this? Or were you like, I can't believe they don't trust me to do this? No, that's. Actually, the way that went down was I was ready for a break. And I think the five of us were kind of at this point of where we've done what we've done.

We've done an amazing job. But like, what if somebody professional came in that's done this before, that's grown a company, you know, two, three, 400 units that knows what that looks like? what could they bring to the table that could add value? And it was really a group decision. And there wasn't really in this new phase, like it was going to be hard for me or some of my other partners, just, you know, one of us to sort of rise above everyone else.

And we also knew that like, hey, even though I was sort of running things, that like we were still very democratic in how we made decisions, you know? It wasn't like I was the boss of everyone. And so... And now you couldn't do that anymore. Yeah, and we were getting bigger.

We were getting bigger. We needed someone to kind of be a decision maker on stuff. And so we all agreed with when they came in. And they had actually asked, like, do one of you guys want to be the CEO? And we all kind of said no. And I was still in the business, per se, but not. I didn't want any more direct reports. I kind of wanted to take a step back and just take a breath.

All right. So you step down, but you stay on in a creative leadership capacity and the brand starts to, you know, the company continues to grow. And he, Hart is also leading the business during COVID, which is, no question, very challenging. But manages to kind of steer it through. I mean, I think by the time, you know, sort of, sort of, By the time, you know, within a couple years, 2020, it hits over 70 locations. So not a bad trajectory. But from what I've read, you weren't happy with how it was expanding. I mean, I'm just looking at this objectively. I think this CEO clearly did a good job. I mean, he got it from 45 restaurants to 96 restaurants and did that in the midst of COVID. So by any account, a success.

But you were not happy with certain things. What were you not happy about? Well, I don't know that there was enough thought behind, hey, are these the exact right markets to go into and why? I think it was a little more to grow versus, here, are we growing the right way? in the right place. And, you know, and then I also just saw some of our branding changing and just, you know, getting a little too corporate for what I felt comfortable with. And, you know, just they weren't bad things per se, but they were just, you know, things

that sometimes if you're not, you know, vocal enough about that like can start, you know, start to water a business down, if you will. Yeah. Heart eventually decided to retire in 2021. And you came back as CEO. Did you, is that something that you wanted to do? You said, I think I got to come back in. I did.

And bring us back to the core, the heart of what we are. Yeah, yeah, I definitely did. When you say went to corporate, I mean, what do you mean like I mean the quality was was affected the the restaurants didn't feel like like they were welcoming what do you mean by that? Yeah just some of the we'd lost some of the edge to our culture they revised the logo um which I didn't really love um you know so we've kind of dialed that back you know back to more of our original logo and how it looks um the restaurants started to get away from our core, you know what I mean? Like, we're a cool local taco shop, right? Like, that doesn't look like 5,000 square feet.

That looks more like 3,000 square feet. Like, cool, funky, graffiti on the walls, not this big kind of massive dining room and everything else. When you came back as CEO, you got rid of, or you closed down a couple of restaurants, including two in Wichita, Kansas, and you laid off 65 employees at headquarters. Yeah. Was that, did you feel like there were just too many people, they'd overhired, or was it more of a quality thing?

We were definitely over, we just had way too much headcount for what we needed, you know. And I remember kind of looking at the, you know, at the business kind of going, like, what are all these people doing? And just, and they're just spending a lot of money that, like, we didn't have, really, to be spending, even at that point, even being as big as we were. And it just, it was time to, like, get back and focus on what do we do? We serve damn good food. We give damn good hospitality, and we run damn good shifts, right? Like, what's the core part of our business that got us to the dance? So really took a step back and really focused back in on, you know, our operations.

And like now if we go open a new restaurant, I always make sure there's at least one internal hire that's a manager in that restaurant versus just everyone being new from outside. You guys are in 16 states right now. Tell me about what the plan is. I mean, you know, I remember interviewing the founder of five guys many years ago on the show. And I know they've got thousands of locations around the world. And they're in Paris. And my children ate there when we were in Paris. I'm like, guys, we're in Paris.

You're going to five guys. They're like, we ordered it. We ordered it in French. That's right. What is the plan for Torchies? Like, are you looking at a future where you've got thousands of locations, not only in all 48, maybe 50 U.S. states, but, but abroad overseas? I mean, immediately, I think we'd like to be a national brand in most, if not all, 50 states.

International, that's probably above my pay grade at this point. But definitely nationally, we definitely want to expand more up and down the East and West Coast, for sure. You stepped down from your second stint as CEO in early 2025, and now you are, what's your role in the company? Chief Innovation Officer. So my whole thing that I'm focused on now is on a lot of innovation and kind of restaurant excellence, if you will. So really focusing in on new food, new items. The restaurant business has gotten very competitive. So I think to win these days, you've got to be bringing out new products, bringing out new stuff.

And also just really looking back in at our operations and our kitchens and, hey, can we be more efficient? Can we be faster? What can we do to improve our operations? And, you know, kind of really dialing that in as we kind of get ready for our next phase of growth. You know, Mike, I'm curious. I mean, as you reflect on just your story, you know, you. you've become a very successful entrepreneur, like that was not going to be your life story. No.

Like your life story could have been strung out, in jail, dead, like any of those things. It's kind of amazing, actually. It is. It is. I think, and it's funny, you know, I've been asked that before, like, hey, do you really celebrate your success? And, you know, I think, you know, one of the advantages and disadvantages of it, I think being successful and being an entrepreneur, you know, sometimes you don't take the time to sort of celebrate your wins

because you're just focused on sort of the next thing in front of you. But there are moments where, like, I got nominated an award at my culinary school for like a legacy achievement award. And I remember receiving that up in Providence and just broke down in tears. because I just, I hadn't really given myself a chance to like, hey man, look what you have done. Like, this is an incredible story and, you know, look at all the opportunities you've created for people and what you've been able to do and what you've been able to overcome. Like, sometimes it's hard to take a step back and sort of reflect on that. When you think about what happened to you, where you started and where you all,

now, you're roughly the same age, you're just, you know, 50-ish. And, I mean, you did not grow up with a lot of money. You've got, you've made a lot of money. You've built a growing business that is just going to get bigger. I'm sure I see you in 10 years, Torchie's going to be much bigger. How much of this do you attribute to the work you put in, the grind, and how much do you think has to do with just luck and fate? You know, probably 75% work and ethic and doing the right things for the right reasons and 25% luck.

I think anyone that says there isn't a little bit of luck that gets people to that level of success is lying to themselves. I think, you know, the pumpkin patch story I talked to you about, right? That could have put us out of business, right? But for some reason, there was a damn pumpkin shortage that year. That kind of got us to the next level that helped refill the coffers to make sure we had enough payroll to cover the next two months of business, right? So there's little things, I think, like that that come up that help businesses along. But then I also think that you're not set up for that type of luck without all the hard work that goes into. setting you up for that, if that makes sense.

That's Mike Ripka, founder of Torchee's Tacos. By the way, remember how Mike says he has a hard time celebrating his wins in business? Well, he has a pretty different attitude about his sobriety. Yep, I still haven't had a drink in 33 years. I just celebrated this month. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in big ideas about business and entrepreneurship,

sign up for my newsletter at gairozz.com or on Substack. This episode was researched by Catherine Seifer and produced by Carla Estevez, with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. It was edited by Kevin Leahy. Our audio engineers were Patrick Murray and Gilly Moon. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, J.C. Howard, Neva Grant, Alex Chung, Andrea Bruce, Sam Paulson, Elaine Coates, Norr Gill, and Carrie Thompson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.