Today in #FuerzaMéxico we present to you: Carlos Mondragón, founder of La Coronela, located in Mérida, Yucatán and tells us his story:
“La Coronela Hamburguesas began in 2014 as an entrepreneurial project that would allow me to quit my job at the time. I am a lawyer by profession, and I dedicated myself to business law for 6 years in a couple of very important companies at the national level; however, my father was always a restaurateur, so I was always in contact with this industry and I always felt attracted to this type of business.
In 2014, along with my girlfriend at the time (now my wife), we decided to save up and buy a foodtruck (which didn't really make it to FoodTruck hehe, it was actually more of a small food trailer), this cart became our weekend project, we dedicated ourselves to washing it, painting it, decorating it, etc., until the day came to put it to work.
The problem was that when we put it to work, we found out that the municipal regulations of Mérida did not allow us to be on the street as a food truck, this discouraged us a bit but we immediately started looking for places to rent so as not to let the dream die.
We found a place in front of a church in the Los Pinos neighborhood, we were working there for a year with a slightly different menu, still without our characteristic hamburgers, however, during all that year with work we managed to sell enough to pay the bills of the business and salaries.
Just after the first year we found that we needed to vacate the premises in which the restaurant was located due to problems with the owners of the premises.
Again we decided not to give up, we revived the Foodtruck that we had bought, and we rented a small parking space in a small commercial square in the Leandro Valle Fraccionamiento.
We started there in July 2016, with our food cart, two tables, and a great desire to show off that we had quality products, even though we were in a small food cart.
Little by little, we became known by the residents of the area, and thanks to the fact that we dedicate ourselves to taking photos and videos of all our hamburgers, we were able to start experimenting with advertising on Facebook, which made people from other parts of the city know about us and take a good drive to visit us and try our Burgers, at that point our 2 tables, had already become 7 tables.
As soon as we could, we rented a place in the square where we put the cart, there we put our first formal kitchen, after that we rented a second place where we put 6 more tables to be able to serve 13 tables.
We were there for approximately 1 year and a half, until in 2018 we were again forced to vacate our 2 stores because the square was sold, and the new owner did not intend to continue renting the premises (they are still unoccupied today).
We were lucky to find a house very close by and again moved to our current location, which is larger and has much more space to serve up to 20 tables.
That same year we embarked on the adventure of opening a second branch in a hidden cabin that we found in Colonia Itzimná, with the certainty that investing in reviving the commercial life of that area was worth it.
As of today we have 2 perfectly established branches, we are fortunate to be able to offer employment to 15 collaborators, and we are planning to open 2 more branches in other areas of the city.
We work every day to improve our processes, and continue offering quality products at affordable prices.
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