YouSaid · the spoken record

Mike Rypka

lines on the record: 83
first: 2025-07-28
most recent: 2025-07-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You know, probably 75% work in 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is. It is. I think It's funny, you know, I've been asked that before, like, hey, do you really celebrate your success? And, you know, I think one of the advantages and disadvantages of, I think being successful and being an entrepreneur is, 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Chief Innovation Officer, so my whole thing that I'm focused on now is A lot of innovation and kind of restaurant excellence, if you will. So really focusing in on New food, new items. The restaurant 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?”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, immediately, I think we'd like to be a national brand, and 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”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, The business kind of going, like, what are all these people doing? And just. And they're just spending a lot of money that we didn't have really to be spending, even at that point, even being as big as we were. And it just was time to 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? 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, just some of the, we'd lost some of the edge to our culture. They revised the logo, which I didn't really love. You know, so we've kind of dialed that back, you know, back to more of our original logo and how it looks. The restaurant started to get away from our core, you know what I mean? 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I don't. 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 growing. Grow versus hare we grow in 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 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were getting bigger. We needed someone to kind of be a decision maker on stuff. And so we all agreed when they came in. And they had actually asked one of you guys want to be I didn't want any more direct reports. I kind of wanted to take a step back and just take a breath.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, actually the way that went down was I was ready for a break. And I think the five of us. Kind of at this point 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 two, three, four hundred 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... This new phase, like it was going to be hard for me or some of my other partners to one of us to sort of rise above everyone else. And we also knew that, 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 now”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But then also to continue to expand and work in the business and not necessarily write it off. And what we came to was 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. Just down to earth, they get the business. They get investments and they had a great track record.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think, you know, the, you know, two things we thought about. One was, hey, look, we've been busting our butt. Know we don't even know what we're worth or not worth as a company. We didn't want to step out, but it was also be nice to take some chips off the table. Like we, 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's a good way to accomplish two of those goals to take some chips off the table?”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 challenges. And, you know, I think. Know, I definitely made some mistakes. It was tough trying to manage all that together.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, two years. And I met her in 2008. And that same year, my mom passed away from a very cancer. So it was just really sort of 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. Know I'm starting to make a little bit of money, but it's just a lot of everything going on at once.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Big time, big time. And so, you know, so we're starting to, you know, take a little bit of money just from a paycheck standpoint, but we definitely weren't taking any kind of dividends or anything like that out.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Getting closer to make some money at that point. We're, you know, I'm taking a paycheck. Farrell and Rebecca had started taking a small pay.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, oh yeah, for sure. Well, and that's why I called her because I wanted to know, hey, give me some more details so I can like fix this, right?”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yet we'll give you a free taco. And then I want to hear your vote. 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. I'll take it.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm going to be giving away this tacos that she dreamed us on, and you can vote for yourself whether you agree with her or not. Because I just, I felt real passionate about our food and like, hey, you know, because it was obvious that this thing the buser 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 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 buser kept trying to take her menu. And I don't know why our buser was doing that that day. I think he just was on autopilot, like cleaned the tables, cleaned 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 to, you know, 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 2 bringing this article.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it came from our customers that said, damn, these tacos are good. What the hell are you putting in these things? 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 cares about the food, that holds each other accountable when something's not right. And they bring a tasting spoon to the manager and make sure, like, hey, does this Diablo sauce taste 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, as 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 winning formula, which is damn good food, damn good hospitality, and damn good shifts.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we had a handbook at that point, you know, so 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 where we started, the kind of things we'd been through. 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was definitely a challenge. And I think Just like the thing that kept giving us hope was we were open in 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 and 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 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 sea bass. And what if I did this? And then how would I format that in a taco? And what I 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very early on, me and Bill agreed that 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 it might take you a while to come up with something because it didn't feel very authentic. And what I mean by that was”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And that was the premise of Torchy's was. We were a place to really come let your hair down, be who you are, be original. All the stress of life and just come enjoy some 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 sort of what Torchy is about.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, you're good. 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 a good brand. And we did a lot of talking about 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 swoosh, 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 Torchies? And we talked about pitchforks and this and that. 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, but not too close, but that we could still capture our customers. And so that's how we found our south first spot.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 him the finances and what we were doing, had him come try the food.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So at this point, we were finally having some success. So before that happened, we got a big write-up in the 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 really kind of helped me. I'd been through rough times in my life, right? Like I'd seen what darkness looked like. 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 do it one more day, put one more foot in front of the other, and just have some faith to just keep doing what you're doing, Mike.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, damn near every week it felt like, you know, there were definitely weeks where I was like, holy cow, it's Wednesday. I need like $3,000 to make payroll, and we've got. 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 Hitas for a river boat. 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, you know, 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.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thousands of pumpkins And I'm like counting the days once Halloween hits. And so one day it was like a Tuesday or Wednesday this news van 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 like really could have gone wrong.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 here it is. It's about October 15th. And like, I still have, like, I don't know if you know how many pumpkins come into a 18-wheeler, but it's 44 pallets of pumpkins. Like, it's a lot of pumpkins. Thousands.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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...”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 mouths. 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 and how we got people to know who and what we are”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's me, and I had a 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 November. 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”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 passin' 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 and give them my menu. And we started delivering very early on. And when you”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was very tough. Again, so there's this 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”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Teresa egg, bacon. So breakfast tacos are real big in Austin. 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 vejita. And then you could make a burrito or get a ⁇ jajita plate. And our first taco of 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 ran.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, no money, at least in the beginning. I didn't get a paycheck, I think, for the first two years I was in business.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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 every dollar that came in the register mattered.”
2025-07-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT