Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 2, February 2004

Copyright 2004 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Tacos Guaymas: a Seattle success story

By JAMES BUSH

For 16 years, friends and co-workers Salvador Sahagun and Lorenzo Ramos would talk about the day when they would start their own business.

One day, Sahagun decided it was time to do more than talk. "I was getting older, I was happy working there, but I said to myself '16 years have gone by. Am I going to be here for 16 more?'"

Eleven years after opening their first Seattle restaurant, their Tacos Guaymas chain has 14 locations with three more on the way. Sahagun runs the operation from an office at their new Fremont restaurant at 100 N 36th St. "We're still partners and we're still friends," Sahagun says proudly.

When the two friends left their jobs at a San Francisco Bay Area restaurant to pursue their dream of owning their own business, they didn't have a specific destination in mind. They cruised up the West Coast and considered several Oregon cities, but settled on West Seattle.

At the first Tacos Guaymas on California Avenue Southwest, Ramos worked in the kitchen and Sahagun out front. "We did that for a year without taking time off: 12 hours a day, seven days a week," he says. "But that's typical for the restaurant business."

While they had never planned to start a chain, after about a year and a half in business, they considered opening a second location in Lynnwood. "When you first start, you are not well-established or very wise," he says. "But we had a landlord that was willing to take a chance on us in Lynnwood."

When that restaurant proved a success as well, Sahagun realized that he could tie future expansion to helping his employees start their own businesses. So he came up with a formula, giving a share in ownership (usually 25 percent to 33 percent, although sometimes up to 49 percent) to the manager and using the chain's growing reputation and receipts to ease the hassles of finding long-term leases and financing.

For example, the co-owner of the Fremont location has two brothers who run Tacos Guaymas locations outside Seattle. "They're running out of brothers," he jokes.

He's also used the expansion to benefit his own family: three nephews and a niece now operate and co-own locations.

Nephew Cesar runs the Green Lake Tacos Guaymas, the chain's most popular North End location. Starting in a small storefront, the Green Lake restaurant has since gobbled up the spaces vacated by two other businesses in the building.

The menu, which is essentially the same at all Tacos Guaymas locations, features burritos with several choices of meat, several vegetarian items, and an impressive selection of traditional Mexican dishes.

"We've tried to keep most of our food like something you would find when you are in the middle of Mexico," Sahagun says.

A native of Cuautla, Jalisco (a mountain town 15 miles east of Puerto Vallarta), Sahagun came to the United States in 1976. He started his California restaurant work as a dishwasher, but soon moved to the front of the house in jobs including busser, waiter, bartender, and manager.

He's enjoyed his time in Seattle, and not just because of the warm welcome its residents have given his business. "I think it's a beautiful city, but I'm having a hard time getting used to the weather," says Sahagun, who says he now visits his hometown twice a year.

He says his chain's success is based on a simple fact: rather than work for others, people want to go into business themselves. And he's pleased that he's had the opportunity to extend a helping hand.

"It's hard to start [a business], and they help me, obviously," says Sahagun. "They do well, I do well."

Sahagun says the expansion process takes up a lot of his time. He works to arrange financing, sign leases, and uses his knowledge of plumbing and electrical work to help renovate buildings before the restaurants open. Not that his work ends once the doors open. "When something's broken," he says, "they call me."

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Tacos Guaymas is located at 100 N 36th St. (Fremont); and at 6808 E Green Lake Way N.