The Taco Kart

A friend’s revolutionary business idea

Welcome to Business Chat, an online blog about innovative business ideas popping up in our society. Innovation is key to astronomical business success and we seek out ideas that buck traditional thinking.

Max: Greetings, I am Max O’Million, host of Business Chat. In recent episodes we’ve uncovered some brilliant ideas that will surely soon become commonplace business strategies in our world. We strive to find brilliant minds that push the envelope of our business thinking. We all know that we can’t become millionaires, much less billionaires, just doing the same thing everyone else does. We need new ideas, new perspectives, and bold new thinking.

We’ve had some far out young entrepreneurs on our program in recent weeks but today my guest is an old friend of mine. His name is Julio Jesus Jimenez. We first met way, way back in the school cafeteria in junior high school. We were both dorks who were not allowed to sit at the cool tables and one day we found each other sitting across from one another at one of the dork tables.

Julio began bitching about the quality of the cafeteria food. I was so on-board! I hated it, too. So we both spent the lunch hour bitching about the cafeteria food and before we knew it we became dear friends. We were BFFs all the way until high school graduation.

But then we went our own ways and didn’t see each other again for over twenty-five years. Then last week I happened to run into Julio down by the school yard. He happened to mention that he was about to open a brand new business. What a coinkidink, am I right? I told him that I was the host of a business blog that highlighted new business ideas and I invited him to be a guest on Business Chat. In need of some exposure, he quickly agreed.

So please welcome my dear friend, Julio Jesus Jimenez…

(Applause.)

(Max and Julio shake hands.)

Max: Julio, welcome to the show.

Julio: Thanks for having me. I apologize for not wearing a tie.

Max: Oh, that’s okay. It’s a written blog. No one can see you or hear you.

Julio: Oh, that’s good.

(Applause.)

Max: I was very intrigued when I heard about your new business idea. Could you tell us a little about it?

Julio: Well… uh… sure… uh… The business is called, The Taco Kart. Yeah, I know there are thousands of taco carts and taco trucks and taco restaurants everywhere. You can hardly throw a dart without hitting a taco stand. I mean seriously! But my idea is so very, very different.

Max: How so?

Julio: Max, do you remember when we were in the junior high school cafeteria?

Max: I try to forget but it’s something I just can’t shake.

Julio: Well, those junior high school tacos were the most disgusting tacos I’ve ever had in my life!

Max: Me, too.

Julio: I mean seriously! What Americans consider to be tacos are a totally different thing from what I knew as tacos growing up. My Abuela, rest her soul, made the most fantastic tacos ever made in the Western Hemisphere. They were my favorite food. She simply could not make enough of them. I ate every taco she put on my plate and forever kept asking for more. She could not make enough! They were the best tacos in the world!

(Applause.)

Julio (continuing): When I grew up and began studying the culinary arts I kept begging my Abuela for her secret recipe. I kept thinking that I could make a mint off of it. But she refused to give me her recipe. She kept saying that I could not have her recipe until I understood the spirituality behind cooking. “Spirituality behind cooking?” I had no idea what the fuck she was talking about — oh, I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have said that word.

Max: No worry. This is a written blog so nothing is heard nor seen.

Julio: Oh good. Anyway, I decided to travel to Myanmar and I enrolled in a Buddhist monastery to learn what spiritual cooking was. Well, the people of Myanmar don’t even know what the hell a taco is so I went to a monastery in Tibet. I still didn’t understand so I went to a monastery in Peru then to one in the Pyrenees. I traveled all over the world trying to learn what spiritual cooking was. I just never understood until one day I found myself sitting on the pavement in a back alley with my back to a brick wall watching customers come out of a Thai restaurant into the alleyway to barf.

(Silence.)

Max: So what did you learn?

Julio: First of all, I realized that true spiritual cooking didn’t even exist in America. It was all about presentation and taste buds. There wasn’t anything spiritual about food in America. And then I saw a reflection of my Abuela in a puddle in the middle of the alleyway. She looked at me and said, “The secret ingredient in all spiritual cooking is love.”

(More silence.)

Julio (continuing): That is when everything in my life changed. I sobered up. I changed my outlook on life. I threw away everything that I knew to be true in life. I threw away all the culinary education I garnered in life. I threw away all the aspirations of extreme wealth out the window. I threw my own ego out the window. And that is when my Abuela’s recipe for tacos flooded my noggin. And that is when the idea for The Taco Kart popped into my noggin.

(Applause.)

Max: So what was the recipe?

Julio: Seriously? You expect me to give out the recipe here on a live show?

Max: Well, it’s not a live show. It’s a written blog and no one can hear or see you.

Julio: Oh yeah, right.

(Laughter and applause.)

Max: So how did this epiphany play into your idea for your Taco cart idea?

Julio: Well, now knowing my Abuela’s secret recipe, and after trying it out and perfecting it according to the spiritual tenets that I had learned I thought it would be a fantastic idea to open a taco cart serving the very same tacos my Abuela made. I figured that it could not fail with that recipe. And, most importantly, I figured that it could not fail using the spiritual practices that I had learned.

Max: Uh… What exactly does that mean?

Julio: Okay, let me explain. Before I open The Taco Kart I prepare all the toppings for those tacos. I chop lettuce and onions and tomatoes and jalapenos and all the other toppings… including chopped mangoes. With all those toppings ready I then spend 20 to 30 minutes praying over them. I infuse them with every ounce of unconditional love that I can. Then I get out the six inch corn tortillas and pray over them Then I get out the beef or chicken meat (sorry, but I never use pork) and I pray over it. By the way, I only use organic, non-gmo ingredients.

I spend at least an hour praying over all the ingredients. This is the secret ingredient: prayer. I serve nothing that is not fully infused with unconditional love (the kind of love my Abuela had for me). I pour every ounce of unconditional love that I can muster into every ingredient that I use. When a customer orders a taco I ask them if they want chicken or beef. I then slap down a corn tortilla on the grill as well as the ordered meat. (I never use pre-formed corn tortilla from some goddam factory.) I say another prayer as the tortilla and meat cook.

When done, I spoon the meat onto the corn tortilla and give it to the customer. They can then put whatever toppings on their taco that they want — every one of which was prayed over by me. See, that’s an important part of my plan. The customer has the power of choice. Instead of every other taco joint out there where tacos come with pre-ordained toppings, the customers get to choose their own toppings — all of which have been intensely prayed over. Every taco is personal and they are all infused with copious amounts of unconditional love. Every taco, no matter how topped, is intensely fused with unconditional love.

Max: Uh… er… uh… okay… uh… so… uh… how do you plan on scaling this?

Julio: Scaling it? It’s not a freaking fish. It’s a taco. What the heck are you talking about?

Max: Well… uh… in order for a business to be successful these days it needs to be scaled. In business today scale is everything. How do you intend to present this idea so that your taco cart idea can expand across the country then the world? No idea can be successful until it is scaled and spread across the country. One simple taco cart can’t be successful until it expands…

(Applause.)

Julio: Fuck that shit! How can anyone in a million outlets be trained in spiritual culinary arts? How can you train a million minimum wage workers in the spirituality of cooking and serving? That’s crazy talk. It took me a quarter of a century to learn the spiritual secrets of my Abuela. I went to monasteries around the world in search of those secrets. I went through a lifetime of seeking to find the understanding. How can a world-wide chain of taco carts be established without that understanding being fully understood by every single worker?

Hey, I came up with a great idea based on a lifetime of spiritual seeking. I’ll be happy if it enables me to pay the rent on my trailer. I’ll be happy if I can spend an occasional night out at the bowling alley. I’ll be happy if the unconditional love I spread out to humanity is picked up and is further spread out to other humans. That’s all I ask. This isn’t something that can be monopolized and homogenized or franchised. It’s a labor of love.

(Applause.)

Max: So you don’t want to be a success with your business idea? The whole idea of starting a business is to get rich. And to get rich you’ve got to scale, you’ve got to always be expanding. Grow. Grow. Grow. That’s the very foundation of business in America.

Julio: Dude, we obviously have different ideas about success. My whole goal in starting The Taco Kart is to spread as much unconditional love as I can. If I can do that then I’m a success. Spreading love through food is a very noble profession. It’s one of the best ways to spread love. And the customers won’t even know they’re being fed love — at least most of them won’t. And furthermore, I’ll only be open Monday through Friday so that I can have weekends off. I love to cook but I won’t work myself to death in order be some millionaire. And I won’t have any employees because I can only trust myself to perform the proper prayers to imbed the love into the food. Screw that scale shit. It’s not about the money. I’m doing this for love, man.

(Applause)

(Julio got up from his seat and walked out of the studio.)

Max: Well… uh… this has been another episode of Business Chat. I hope we all learned what to do… or not do… to become rich. I hope everyone will tune in next week to hear our guest, Galinda Flapwinkle tell us how she became a millionaire by providing manicures to homeless people.