People First, Tacos Second. The Culture That Built Torchy's.

0:10Hey folks, I'm Ray Latif and you're tuned into Taste Radio, the number one podcast for entrepreneurs, trailblazers, and changemakers in the food and beverage industry. In this episode, we're joined by Mike Ripka, the founder of the wildly popular and rapidly expanding restaurant chain, Torchy's Tacos. When Mike Ripka launched Torchy's Tacos out of a trailer in Austin, Texas, he wasn't thinking about private equity or market expansion. He just wanted to serve, quote, damn good tacos. Fast forward to today, and Torchy's has grown into a revered fast casual chain with national ambitions, fueled by strategic investment and a fiercely loyal customer base.

0:57But the real engine behind the brand's success isn't just craveable food, it's culture. Torchy's differentiates itself through scratch-made food and a willingness to take creative risks with its menu. Behind the scenes is a deeply human company culture built around second chances, internal growth, and genuine care for employees. In this episode, Mike opens up about the humble beginnings of the company, how word of mouth and grassroots marketing initially drove Torchy's success, and why, quote, clean, craveable food keeps the customers coming back. He also explains why it was critical to find an investment partner that provided not just capital, but deep operational and consumer insights, and how his personal struggles shaped a company culture rooted in redemption and opportunity.

1:51Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I am supremely honored to be sitting down with the one and only Mike Ripka, the founder of Torchy's Tacos. Mike, it's great to see you. Good to see you too, my man. Thanks a lot. Yeah, thank you so much for having us here. We're on the cusp, as it were, of our Taste Radio Austin meetup, where about 100-plus professionals in the CPG community are going to come out here, have some chips, have some drinks, have some tacos, mingle, talk, and hopefully get to meet you because you're a bit of a legend in these parts. Okay, all right. I'll take that. Well, I mean, you've come such a long way.

2:28I have. In a relatively short amount of time. Torchy's Tacos started in 2006, kind of on a wing and a prayer. And here you are now with well over 100 stores. How do you feel? Do you feel like you've gotten to the place that you always wanted to get to when you started this business? You know, it's funny. I started in a food truck, just me and a cook, 2006. My big dream back then was to just get to a brick-and-mortar restaurant. You know, I didn't imagine I'd have 100-plus restaurants at some point. So in terms of that, I've definitely exceeded all and above anything I could imagine from that standpoint.

3:05You know, it's funny, though. I think as an entrepreneur, you're always still on to the next thing. You know, I think that's one of the blessings and one of the curses about being an entrepreneur is you're sort of never satisfied, I guess, if you will. So there's always something else to be doing. Well, when you first started out, what was the signal? What was the spark? What was the moment that you realized that Torchews could be bigger than just the one restaurant that you originally envisioned? Probably around restaurant four to six, somewhere in there. It was actually right up the road from here at our Arbor Trails location.

3:43It was like our first big lease. We were next to a Whole Foods and a Costco and all the big boys. It was a real big lease, much more expensive than anything we'd ever paid before. and opening day, we had a line of about 75 people waiting to get in before we even opened at 7 a.m. at the time. Who buys tacos at 7 a.m.? Say what? I said, who buys tacos at 7 a.m.? Lots of people in Austin, Texas. They love our breakfast tacos here in Austin. All right. So, yeah, that was a big turning point. I think I really realized, like, holy cow, like, this thing can be kind of on center stage. And then there were some moments, you know, our first location in Dallas did really well.

4:26Our first location in Houston did really well. And probably one of my more humbling moments was when we actually opened out a state in Denver. Our opening party, there was a blizzard. I think 24 inches of snow was falling in Denver. And we literally had two rows of lines wrapped around the building to get into our opening party. And I just remember feeling just completely humbled like, holy cow, here we are in this other state. And we've got all these fans that have showed up that are so excited to see us here. And that was a real special moment for me, for sure. And this was the time before social media is what it is today.

5:05I feel like the quote-unquote influencers out there, the Twitterverse, well, Facebook was out there, but it wasn't what it is today. So a lot of the interest, a lot of the excitement had to come from word of mouth. Yeah, most of it was word of mouth, for sure, especially in those early days. I mean, Facebook, once that got up and running, helped a lot. I can remember Twitter was actually released here at South by Southwest in Austin. That was obviously a big deal when that came to fruition. And it's only just gotten bigger over the years. But back then, it was a lot of just word of mouth. I mean, I would spend probably for our first 15 to 20 stores, I'd spend two to three weeks in a market and literally hand out invite cards to say, hey, come check us out, come to our grand opening.

5:54My name is Mike. I'm the owner. So there's a lot of, you know, face-to-face connecting with the community. And, you know, it didn't matter if you were a tire shop, a dentist office, I'd come by and say hi if you were near, kind of within two, three miles of our restaurant. So got lots of walking miles in those days. Well, I was going to ask, what was it about the word of mouth? What specifically was being shared about your restaurants that made people interested in coming there? Certainly the food, But it feels like the personal connection that you brought to the table had a real impact. That for sure.

6:25Definitely, we've always been about the food. You know, we've got damn good in our logo, damn good tacos. And that came from our customers probably the first month we were open. That wasn't in our logo when we first opened day one. We added that a little later. And that really became our moniker in terms of having a real high standard when it comes to food and hospitality and just making sure that we're like going above and beyond for folks. Damn good. That could go either way. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Do you get any complaints? You know, we get our share of complaints from time to time, especially with this many restaurants.

6:58It's hard to be perfect every single time, but I'd say we bat 9.9 out of 10 most days, which is pretty impressive. I would say that's very impressive, for sure. You know, I'm really excited when I meet entrepreneurs who have a vision and then see that vision through. So when you think about the next stage of development, and typically this is a question I ask at the end of the interview, but right now, 130 plus restaurants, a brand name that is so beloved, a consumer base that is so loyal. How do you think about your personal future and that of your company? I just changed my role recently. I'm now the chief innovation officer.

7:37We brought in a new CEO recently. His name is Paul Macaluso. He's a great guy. He's been with us now for a couple months. He's doing great stuff. He's a real strong marketing background. So we're kind of in a phase, especially being as big as we are, that, you know, marketing's definitely some help we needed in terms of expanding and growing. But I really see my role just moving forward as, you know, maintaining the Torchy's culture, very true and dear to my heart, making sure that we're continuing to provide opportunities for our people, which is a really big deal in our company. We've got tons of stories of just, you know, folks who've been cooks, cashiers, now running their own restaurants.

8:18Some of them run in regions. We've got people in our purchasing department that came from that and kind of all of the above. And really just focused on innovation in food and really making sure that we stay true to who we are in terms of the food and the culture and the restaurants. Taking a step back from the day-to-day can certainly be helpful for your mental health, I think for your, sometimes for your physical health as well. Has that been the biggest impact for you is just being able to rest a lot more than you had been? Not really. I'm still very involved in the business day to day. You know, me and Paul are kind of at the hip working together, tackling things.

8:54But you know, I still am involved in pretty much most meetings we have every day. So I'm still, I'm still on the train, brother. I'm on the bus. That's great to hear. I asked you earlier how often you come into your restaurants and you say pretty often. And you're here today for this interview and for our event tonight, but I'm sure you peeked in the back and made sure that everything was going the way it was when you, well, I'm sure there've been some changes since day one of Tortoise Tacos, but the way that you want them, the way that you expect them to see them be done. Yeah, yeah. I'm still very heavily involved in our menu, our restaurant design, the types of equipment we use, layouts of our kitchen, even the design of our restaurants.

9:35I'm involved in a lot of that, making sure that, again, we're serving those same damn good tacos that we did since day one. And even I can even say today and I don't think there's many restaurants that can say this. Like, I'd say the quality of our food today is better than it was even when we started. So we've got better sourcing capabilities. You know, when we started, we didn't have fresh homemade tortillas. Today we have fresh homemade tortillas. So there's a lot of stuff that we continue to do to keep just kind of innovating and making sure that we're staying with the times and staying with our customer.

10:09Well, back in 2006, this is me talking, I feel like Torchy's was at the forefront of the premium fast casual taco chain. Yeah. I don't even want to mention, you know, the big boys out there. They're not in the same, they don't play in the same sandbox. Yeah. But when trends emerge, and that of premium, fast-casual restaurants, tacos or otherwise, it's hard to stand out. What do you think made the difference between Torchy's Tacos and the other competing chains that were playing in your space? Well, I think one thing that really differentiates us from a lot of the sort of call it fast-casual players out there is we have a full bar, a full-service bar, which not many people have.

10:55That's a big deal, I think, for our customers. And the environment that we're able to create inside the four walls of the restaurant, that's a huge deal. Everything's made to order, made from scratch. And all our restaurants, you know, there's a lot of passion and love that goes in our food. And so those two things definitely differentiate us a lot from who else is out there. And I mean, we were kind of, there wasn't really much like us when we started in terms of kind of that right in the middle, you know, not QSR, but not casual dining. We were kind of on the forefront of that. I think consistency is the most important part of a business like yours.

11:39Someone walks in for the first time, they want to get the same experience or better the 12th, 20th time they come in. And I think about perhaps the biggest premium, I don't even know if you can call it a fast casual change, but Starbucks, right? Yeah. There's a lot in the news about how Starbucks has really slipped in terms of its quality, in terms of the experience that you get, that you expected to get from, say, 10, 15 years ago. It's changed quite a bit. McDonald's-ish is the term I hear a lot nowadays. And you're trying to recapture that. And it's really hard. Yeah. So when you're trying to maintain that consistency of experience, food, service, ambience, what have you, how do you do it in a way that makes people feel like nothing has changed or things have at least changed for the better?

12:24You know, for us, we invest a ton in training. Training is super important. That's probably the biggest thing is making sure that your folks have the right tools to do the job they need. And it's in a format that they understand. You know, we have a lot of younger workers that work in restaurants. It's just kind of how that works. And so we have a lot of digital capabilities in our training materials to meet them where they're at. So a lot of things you can do on your iPhone or your iPad. It's real easy, real simple. A lot of digital videos, a lot of digital learning. So we've invested a lot in that to make sure that we're meeting our staff where they are.

13:01and the other thing is really building that culture and that pride around the food and the hospitality so we have a winning formula towards jesus damn good food damn good hospitality damn good shifts and if you can do those three things every day you're winning and so we we try to keep things simple clear and easy to understand you know so that when our team members are out working in the stores they know what their purpose is and what what they're driving for every day Where does affordability fit into this equation? I'm going to pick on Starbucks again. Probably the last time I ordered a cup of coffee from Starbucks, it was like$3.75.

13:40And that's just a regular cup of coffee. I don't know, two years ago, three years ago, it was maybe$2.25. Why? What's changed so dramatically besides worse experience? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, when you take into account how difficult it is, especially post-COVID with inflation, uncertain economic times, how do you consider affordability for your customers? You know, that's been, I think, a problem a lot of folks have been trying to figure out how to solve. I think there's a lot of things that go into that. I mean, wage rates have gone up. There's been a lot of pressure just from supply chain.

14:16And, you know, most recently there's bird flu, which has affected eggs and affected chicken prices. So there's a lot of things that, you know, you're constantly sort of battling. So I think for us, we get a lot of help around pricing. We don't take pricing too often, which may hurt us or may not hurt us. I don't know. We've always been real careful in terms of how we take pricing. the other thing is we look at efficiencies within the restaurant to make sure like you know hey can we do this with the same amount of bodies we have today i told you i'm very involved in the kitchen design so we've constantly evolved that to make it easier on our staff to make it more efficient inside the back so how we lay out the equipment the type of equipment we use to still produce the same product but doing it in a more efficient manner so doing that and And also having a lot of really good relationships with your suppliers and vendors to try and keep costs as manageable as possible.

15:15So that way you're not constantly just hitting customers over the head with another price increase. So it's a bit of a Rubik's Cube, if you will. And I think it's that way for a lot of folks. What's your best advice for having a good relationship with your suppliers? So we do a yearly conference that they come to. So we meet with them directly on that. We also have tons of communication back and forth throughout the year. You have like a Torchy's live event? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? Not live on Instagram. No, no, not live on Instagram. But you have like essentially a trade show for Torchy's? Yeah, well, not really a trade show.

15:52So it's for all our managing partners. So everyone who runs restaurants is mainly for them. It's also a big award celebration. But we invite all our vendors there. They help sponsor some of the event to help pay for it, which is nice. but we also we make sure that we invest time with them during that conference there's a lot of time that they get to spend with our folks in the restaurants so there's a real good understanding of like what our needs are they also get to hear like hey this is what this next year is going to look like this is where where we're not growing and so there's just a lot of communication back and forth and I think that's probably the biggest key to any good relationship is you got to have great communication.

16:35So we communicate a lot with our vendors in terms of letting them know what we're doing, what we're not doing, and also getting them involved in some of the decision making when it makes sense. So that way they feel like they're part of the solution as much as we are. I've asked that question of a lot of entrepreneurs, and typically the answer is about communication and transparency. I wonder, devil's advocate here, if there's a time when maybe transparency isn't the right path, isn't the right decision. Maybe you have to be a little bit more vague in how you communicate with a supplier because what you're going to tell them isn't necessarily in your interest.

17:11Has that ever come up for you? Maybe if it's, hey, we know we might need to change to a different vendor. You know, that's obviously something you got to kind of watch what you say or not say around certain folks. But typically, being transparent, typically, I've always thought seems to work the best. We don't have a lot to hide, so there's not really anything there that I've ever been too worried about sharing or not sharing. I mean, obviously, there's certain details of the business that you're not going to share with certain people for whatever reason, but most things, it's usually better to get ahead of things.

17:48And even if, hey, maybe this relationship's coming to a close, like, you'd be surprised if you're up front with that with some folks that it can actually, you can break up a lot easier than you can if you hit them, you know, across the side of the head. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's, I mean, that's great perspective. And I think something that is not often considered when you are breaking up with a supplier, even perhaps a team member. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about affordability. We talked about prices and a lot of folks think that, well, if I get to a certain scale, the economies of scale will benefit my customers such that I can reduce prices.

18:23Yeah. But that only happens if you get to a point where you are really big. And I know really big is a relative term, but you've been really deliberate in terms of how you've grown the Torchies business. Other quick service restaurants, fast casual restaurants, whatever you want to call them. I mean, some of them get into the thousands of locations pretty quickly and have. And some of them have worked really well. I think in some cases, quality has slipped pretty dramatically. Why has it been so important for you to be deliberate in how you've grown this business? Well, I think certain formats can make it easier to grow quicker than others, right?

18:59With us, there's a lot of culture around the food. We're making everything in-house, in the restaurants. That involves a lot of training. You can't just hand that off and think that it's going to get done right. You've got to have training teams there. You've got to invest in the people. You've got to make sure that they know what they're doing. May I interrupt you there? What's an example of a particularly difficult part of the training or one that requires a lot of education and a lot of practice? Yeah, well, just, you know, making sauces, correct? Right. Like if you're making a homemade sauce from scratch, they need to know like how to handle the ingredients when they come in the back door.

19:41Like, hey, are we getting the ripest tomatoes we need to get? Are we getting the right habanero peppers or whatever? How you handle those ingredients before they go into making the sauce, how they're cooked, how long they're cooked, what the consistency of the sauce needs to be, what the flavor of it needs to be. So there's more complexity involved in that versus like, hey, everything's getting made off site and you're opening a bag and throwing it in a steam pan, if you will. I apologize because I thought that's what most restaurants do. The fact that you're using fresh tomatoes and fresh jalapenos and making literally the sauces from scratch, I hope people know that.

20:21Yeah, we've probably not done as good a job as we need to to tell that story. That's one of the things that Paul's actually been helping us is, you know, think through, like, how do we message that to the guest? How can we, you know, get that more out in the forefront? So I think it's definitely, I don't know that we always get the credit we probably deserve for that. Yeah. I also think that if you're training people to do the right thing, to do the thing that you want to do your way, it sort of limits your ability to franchise, right? Because if you just hand over the reins, hand over the keys to somebody else and say, hey, take care of this brand name.

20:58But yeah, we have a book and so on and so forth. And this is how you run the restaurant. They still make cut corners. Is that why you haven't franchised? Yeah, we have not franchised, and it's been mainly because of that. Like I said, I think it really depends on the format. We have a bigger menu than some of our counterparts. I'll give a shout-out to Chipotle. They've done well. I think it's probably because they haven't franchised. You know, they've kept their culture, their food, and their restaurants. I think the people that do that and do that well can maintain a lot better systems and things.

21:33And, you know, there's plenty of great franchise businesses out there, but it needs to be set up in a way that, like, it's very easy to execute for just about anybody. Yeah. Well, shout out to Jimmy John's because, my goodness, talk about a really well-run company where every time you go to one of their restaurants, you're getting the same high-quality service and quality of ingredients. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, the proof is in the pudding. What do they sell for? A lot of money. It was well over a billion dollars. Yeah, there was a B at the end of that price tag, for sure. Yes, there was.

22:07Well, speaking of money, you took private equity, Torchies did in 2020. What was behind that decision, and what's been the impact? So the main purpose for bringing on a partner like that was really to get a partner that could help us strategically grow. At that point in the business, you know, you sort of know what you know, right? And you don't know what you don't know. And we wanted to be set up for success in terms of like, hey, we had just opened that first store in Denver. We had a couple in Oklahoma. And then we were mainly based in Texas. So we're like, where do we go next and why? What does that look like?

22:43Are there things we need to think about as we start to expand into other states and other parts of the country? And we really wanted a partner that could help us think through some of those things and try and at least avoid some mistakes. And we brought on a company called General Atlantic. They've been great, awesome partners, very helpful. They've got a great team that has lots of resources that you can go to for, you know, just help on just about anything you can think of, whether it's banking relationships or consumer research. So they've been a really good partner to us. Yeah, General Atlantic, they invested in athletic brewing in 2024, really fast-growing, non-alcoholic beer brand.

23:23And certainly I can see some parallels between what they saw in terms of value and quality between Torchy's and Atlantic, General Atlantic, that is. Along those same lines, I think it's really dependent on the consumer or consumer trends as to whether an investment can exist in the long term. If it's just a flash in the pan, a company like General Atlantic, an investment firm like that, is not going to make that investment. No. But when it comes to what they saw in Torchies for the long term, what was that? I mean, how did they analyze the potential for your brand? Well, I think what they saw is we've got, well, one, we had a very loyal following, which is a big deal.

24:10There's a lot of culture in our brand. They like to invest in brands that have good culture. and we had scale already. You know, they don't typically invest in really small companies. They want companies with some scale. So we already had some scale. And I think they saw the potential for our brand really being a national brand, which is, you know, kind of where we're headed. Yeah. I'm going to say something really stupid here, but I'll say it anyway. Maybe we'll cut this. I love that show Breaking Bad, right? Yeah, I love that show. Love that show. Well, I was thinking those Puyo Germano, it's obviously very different business, But they had a big partner, too, Madrigal Electromotive.

24:50Certainly very different kinds of businesses. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. But, yeah, I'm sure you get the breaking bad in Los Poyos Romano's comments all the time. Well, Gus Fring was really proud of the innovation that he always brought. He said, you know, we are always coming out with new products that our customers love because we know our customers so well. Yeah. And you clearly know your customers well. One, how do you get to know them as well as you do? And two, how do you create innovation? How do you develop new products such that they are a good fit for your audience? So we do a lot of listening.

25:25We pay a lot of attention to our social channels. We have an internal survey that any one of our customers can fill out when they're in the stores, online. Super easy. So we get lots of feedback. We've done focus groups over the years. General Atlantic's helped us with some of that consumer research. So we definitely stay tight to kind of who's out there and what they're thinking. We also look at some different culinary trend software that we have in-house that we look at to kind of see who's playing what and what's hot and what's not. We don't always make that determined in terms of how we innovate.

26:04A lot of our innovation really comes from inspiration, to be honest with you, which sometimes can take a little longer. But we've always, since day one, one of the big promises me and my original partner made was that, like, hey, if we're not coming from an inspired place, it's probably not authentic. And so we wait for those moments to kind of get that inspiration. And it could be as simple as, hey, I watched some cooking show and watched them use an ingredient a certain way that, like, made me think of, like, man, that would be really good in a taco. And I run in the kitchen and go get my mad scientist hat on and go have fun.