I got a little cocky Long Island in me like I always
thought it was going to be successful right from
the start. I knew we were going to put everything
into it because we thought we had something
that was unique.
There were no barbecue restaurants here in the
city. We are so close to the United States.
Mexicans love meat.
There was a great opportunity to open up a
new food category in a city of 23 million people.
And when you have that window to be able to do
something like that, you have to seize it.
So that was it. You know, bing, bang, boom, done.
A lot of money. Millions, millions in brisket, guys.
I'm Dan Defossey. I'm 44 years old.
I live here in Mexico City.
My Texas-style barbecue restaurants brought in
over $9 million in revenue last year.
We have the best damn mac and cheese in Mexico City.
I promise. In total, we have seven restaurants.
Pinche Gringo BBQ, Pinche Gringo sandwich shops and
Pinche Bar are part of Grupo Chilangogringo,
which is the umbrella parent company of these
three different concepts that are here in Mexico
City. We actually opened this
restaurant to share with Mexicans an authentic part
of our culture so that we can bring the two
countries together.
Mexicans think that our food is fries and
hamburgers and fast food and frozen things that are
microwaved. So if I was able to open something
uniquely American, really beautiful tasting because
our guys are working all throughout the night to
make something delicious, this is the power of being
able to share my beautiful American culture
with Mexico. And this is how I can give back to the
country that has embraced me so much.
I grew up in Copiague, Long Island, New York.
I'm a proud Long Islander.
I got a job at the Apple Store in Soho, New York.
I was teaching the iPhone on stage, and then over
the three years I grew in my position, I became head
of marketing in education for Latin America.
One day I was sitting on the mountain with my
friend who also worked for Apple and I said,
"Hey, let's do something else and let's change our
lives." My partner is from Mexico City and
he's brought a lot of local insight to the
business. So I decided we're going to do
something more iconically Texan.
And of course, there's nothing more iconically
Texan than an Airstream.
We found one that was being sold in Edinburg,
Texas. We drove there and we bought this 27-foot
trailer. We hooked it up to a truck and we drove
that thing 15 hours from Edinburg to Mexico City.
I decided that I wanted to offer authentic
American lemonade.
They don't have lemonade in the powder, so I bought
50 cases of country time lemonade in powder form,
and it probably wasn't a good idea to drive 50
cases of white powder in a shiny truck in states in
Mexico that have definitely been ravaged by
the drug trade. We got stopped 11 times by police
who were just trying to check out what the heck
was going on. They went inside.
They opened the boxes, they found this white
powder. I was like, why would I be driving it down
to Mexico? Like, we're driving it back to the
U.S. - and they opened the lemonade, they tasted
it, and they found out it really was lemonade.
So it took us a long time to get down, but it was
definitely a journey that I can write a screenplay
about. About a week before we were about to
open, I had literally $100 in my bank account
and I needed to pay my rent.
So I called my dad and my dad in his strong New York
accent, I asked him, you know, "Dad, please, can
can I borrow $1,000 so I can pay my rent?" And he
says to me, "Son, you got your master's degree at
Columbia University and you're down in Mexico
opening a barbecue restaurant." And yeah, he
didn't give me the money.
I think because of the name being Pinche Gringo,
it means darn American, and I think it gave us a
bit of humility, and we were making fun of
ourselves a little bit, which I think brought down
a wall and allowed our Mexican customers to be
more open to something that was very unique and
different. I was the cashier, my business
partner was the guy cutting the meat, the
butcher, and then the security guard smoking the
meat overnight. And the three of us just kept on
learning how to make the business grow.
And it was tough.
No one's here. We were outside of the restaurant
passing out brisket samples to people who had
no idea what brisket was.
Those first couple of weeks, making $30 a day
was definitely challenging. I was nervous
and the food didn't taste so good at the beginning,
to be honest. This is our first night and our
official barbecue brisket.
We gave a sample of our food to some dogs.
Dogs didn't eat it, and that's when we were like,
okay, this is a problem.
We kept on practicing over and over.
And one day a reporter came.
She saw the restaurant, she brought her cameras
in. We were on public television in an episode
of her show.
And since then, lines everywhere.
One of the greatest things about Pinche Gringo
BBQ is that the restaurant was received in
open arms. I did not tropicalize anything from
Mexico. I do not have tortillas.
I do not have agua Jamaica, agua horchata.
I don't have chilies toreados.
And the most sacrilegious thing is that I do not
have limes and Mexicans love limes on things.
And why? Because I wanted to offer something that
was unique, that was different than anything
has ever seen before.
When we started Pinche Gringo BBQ, we really
wanted to make sure that it was authentically
American. So we were hiring a lot of people
that spoke English, that maybe had lived and worked
in the United States.
Then after a couple of months, we started
realizing that a lot of those employees that were
working here were deported from the United
States. So I considered that Pinche Gringo was a
safe haven for them to be able to be here and to
talk about it in a in a very open way.
A typical day in the life of a restaurant owner is
always crazy.
You're a firefighter.
You're putting out fires everywhere. Everything
else is going okay today? It's very dynamic due to
the complexity of what we have here.
I'll send you an email with all the updates.
Are we going to lose next week?
No.
We are a place that sells 15 to 20 metric tons of
meat per month, so meat is absolutely the biggest
expense in the business.
Labor cost is not as high as it is in the U.S.
and so our margins are a bit healthier to be able
to offer our product at a lower price point so more
of the city could be able to afford it.
Being an entrepreneur is definitely much more
challenging than working in a structured company
that you are not fully liable for.
Pepsi put our logo on the back of a can to advertise
our stand up comedy nights. We were very
excited about that.
This is our brand of mezcal.
It's called Pinche Mezcal. I can't stop
thinking about it if I'm on vacation or if I'm
resting. I'm always thinking about what is
happening in the business, and that
definitely takes its toll on some people.
My goal is how do we grow but still be able to make
businesses that really touch people's hearts?
That's a very, very hard thing to do.
But my validation in life of knowing that when
people come in, they are not just excited about
what they see. They love it.
They want to come back.
They tell their friends and family about it.
And that is when you have a beautiful business.
It's not about your margins, your profit line.
And so my challenge is being able to sustain that
over the long term as the number of people in our
company expand.
It makes me very happy every day to go to work.
I love going to work.
I love my people.
I love the restaurants.
I love being here.
And that's really, really great because when you
love your work so much, it doesn't feel like work
anymore. And I'm living that dream.