If you’re up early in the golden state, there’s no better place to grab a bite than Aquino’s Birreria. Founded in 2020, this breakfast-and-brunch hotspot is one of the Pacific Grove area’s trendiest, highest-rated Mexican restaurants. At age 20, owner Gustavo Aquino founded the eatery to support his family, who have a storied history in the culinary world. Now, Gustavo carries on that legacy with a range of popular dishes that fuse Mexican traditions and American tastes. The tech supporting Aquino’s passion? None other than Otter’s Restaurant Operating System.
To find out how this youthful master of all things birria achieves statewide acclaim, we dove deep into Gustavo’s background. During our discussion, we touched on the challenges of opening a restaurant during the pandemic – and how Aquino’s succeeded nonetheless. Gustavo told us about the passions that drove him to open an eatery, and outlined his ambitions for the future. Throughout this interview, you’ll learn how Otter’s Restaurant Operating System enhances the management, growth, and profit of businesses in any environment. Let’s dig in!
What was the original idea behind starting Aquino’s Birrieria?
Gustavo: My family has always wanted to have our own business, and specifically our own restaurant. We’ve always worked in restaurants.
What role does your family play in the restaurant?
My father runs the back. He’s our kitchen manager slash chef. He has over 20 years’ experience in the restaurant industry, from being a line cook at a breakfast restaurant to a head chef in fine dining. He’s pretty much worked with every kind of food and beverage there is. Same as my mom. She has over 10 years’ experience in the restaurant industry. But she has more of a background in baking, so we do a lot of desserts here, as well. Most of it comes from her.
What is your day-to-day role at the business?
I take care of most of everything in the front of the house, and just everything managerial. I’ve always worked in restaurants – I’ve been a server, I’ve been a busser, a dishwasher, a line cook… I pretty much work every aspect of the restaurant. I’ve been doing that for about eight years, now.
Otter has a lot of clients owned and operated by families. What advice do you have for family-run restaurants?
Before getting into anything, have a good chat about what everyone’s role in the restaurant will be. At times it can be tough with all the emotions involved. . With us, we keep it professional. What I always tell people is that when we’re in the restaurant, we treat everyone as professionals, not family. Our family is really close outside of the restaurant, but everyone’s strictly business here. We don’t let a lot of stuff go without making a group decision.
Which members of your family work at Aquino’s?
That’s the fun part. I brought on both of my siblings. They’re a bit younger than me, but they both work here. My sister does prep and expediting, and my brother works front-of-house and expedites, too. And I have a girlfriend – she’s, like, my manager. It’s pretty much all family within the business apart from a couple of friends. But they’re longtime family friends.
Aquino’s opened in 2020 during the pandemic. What was that experience like?
Before coming to the location we’re at now, we started a ghost kitchen. We were open for three days a week in a small, small kitchen. Not far from [our current location] – just down the street. That space was a catering company that was shut down by the pandemic. They had a kitchen available for rent. So we rented it out, and tested items a few times each week. It really took off on social media from there.
How long did it take your business to start building traction on delivery apps?
The funny thing is that we didn’t actually get onto any third-party delivery apps until we moved into our current location. At our ghost kitchen, I was doing the deliveries. We were strictly taking orders via Instagram message. We were the first to do that! People enjoyed texting their orders instead of calling them in or placing them online.
How did that strategy work for you? Do you think it helped build customer loyalty?
Our text-only approach was really one of the best things for me. Personally, I don’t like ordering food for pickup over the phone. I feel like a lot of people in this generation are used to texting. It’s easier to just send a message and have your food be ready.
At the beginning, we didn’t have anyone to help us answer the phone. So it was easier to receive orders over text – easier to upsell. I’ve seen that a lot of companies do that now. Dominos has their pizza-ordering app that lets you order over text. I could see that getting adopted more and more.
Does your current restaurant offer in-house dining?
I’ve worked as a server before. It’s challenging. I know the reality of it. I know what it takes to run table service. So I decided that Aquino’s would just be a counter-service restaurant. Guests order food at the front, and we just bring everything out to them. I feel like that’s better on labor and payroll costs, because I don’t have to have so many people working in the restaurant at any given time.
How do you handle all the orders you receive across each channel?
We just do it ourselves. When I used to work in restaurants, we had orders from third party apps and orders placed over the phone. We used to pick up calls for orders and manually put them into the POS. The best part about Otter is that every order placed online goes into one platform, and it all shoots out of the printer automatically. The kitchen is able to get the orders right away. It just saves a lot of time and money.
What changes have you seen since transitioning from a ghost kitchen to a full-service restaurant?
Yeah, I saw growth right away. The reason that we decided to get onto third-party apps was that when we were doing our own deliveries, our menu was limited. There were only so many things people could order. Since we moved over here, we were able to expand to a two-page menu and have so many options. The location that we’re at is ideal for delivery because [drivers] have a lot of different avenues to get around the whole city and nearby cities.
On a slow day, we now do about 50-75 orders. On a good day, we do upwards of 100. I couldn’t handle that alone – I had to find a solution for delivery apps.
Would you say that a strong location is important when offering restaurant delivery?
I run a full catering operation as well, so I needed to find a place that was big enough and had a large enough parking lot to load all the delivery trucks. If I was more inside the city, parking would be so limited, and we’d only have it for between 15 and 25 minutes. But the location I’m at now is a huge parking lot. It’s easier for the drivers.
Drivers tell me that when they go to other restaurants, it’s so hard. If their food’s not ready, their car’s just parked in the middle of the street. It’s easier for them to park here, and if we’re super busy, they can spend a few minutes in our lobby.
How do you ensure high-quality food delivery?
We’re always checking the quality of everything that goes out, and making sure we keep track of prep-time for each delivery. If a driver is late, we prefer to contact DoorDash and let them know that we don’t feel comfortable delivering a low-quality item. We want to serve the best-quality food we can, and we’re always happy to remake an item or choose another driver that’s nearby. Quality is the biggest thing for us. That’s what people really know us for.
What items do you recommend at Aquino’s?
We like to keep up with the trends. We have different items that you can’t typically find at a lot of other places. We have a hot Cheeto burrito, a hot Cheeto quesadilla, a grilled jalapeño and onion burrito… That’s grilled jalapeños and onions with a melted cheese crust on the outside, like a burrito. We do a California burrito that has french fries in it…
Whatever’s happening online, we try to do our own version of it – or an even better one. That’s what puts us in front of our competition.
How does restaurant tech impact Aquino’s business?
My background is in computer science, and I wanted to start a social media marketing company. I decided the best way to try that out was to make my own restaurant. I was only 20 years old then. I’m 23 now. When I was building my restaurant, I spoke to a lot of different restaurant owners. They don’t really like to innovate – they like to keep their classic ways. I’d like to make sure I’m staying ahead.
As far as technology like online ordering systems go, I’m always making sure to be as efficient and effective as possible. Other people don’t offer online ordering. They choose not to. But for us, online ordering is huge. Without it, our revenue would drop, like, 50%.
What is the biggest headache in your job? What’s the biggest reward?
I think the headache here is that this is my first time actually owning and operating a restaurant. A lot of other restaurant owners have done it before. I’m still trying to figure out every day how I’m going to make things good and efficient. That’s the hardest thing for me, but I’ve done a pretty good job.
The biggest reward for me is that, as long as everyone’s happy, as long as people come in and they’re happy with the food and the experience, that shows me I’m doing something right.
How has your business changed since you started using Otter?
Otter really made it a lot easier to bring all our delivery apps into one tablet. I have a lot of trouble sometimes with the other tablets, but I know that there’s really only one that matters at this point. Otter shows all the delivery platforms.
How has Promotions affected Aquino’s business?
It’s been doing really well for us! I always look at the numbers, and they speak for themselves. I look at non-promoted sales, and I see that they’re doing pretty good. Then, I look at promoted sales, and I see that they’re doing even better. What I like about it is that it’s always trying different types of promotions, seeing what people like. I’m learning a lot from it, as well.
I try to do my promotions on third-party apps myself, but I don’t always have time to be there. I know that Otter is always running a promotion for me. When I can’t be there, I have the reassurance that something’s been there to make a new offer and bring new people in for the first time.
Would you recommend Otter to other restaurants? If so, why?
I would definitely recommend Otter to other restaurants. A lot of the time, [owners] may not know what exactly is going on with their [business], or they might not know how to work their tech. Otter just automates it for them. That gives them a little bit of an upper hand.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
In the beginning, we started offering $1 tacos. That was our carne asada. People really liked that. They became a trend on social media. My mom had her own recipes for these tacos, going back to when she was a little kid. My grandma used to make birria, because my family’s from Oaxaca, Mexico. That’s really where these recipes come from.
When people try our food, they say it reminds them of when they were young, or when their parents used to make them food. It’s different here – other places follow a recipe, versus us, where my mom is the one preparing [our food] every morning. It’s not like she’s going by a straight recipe. She’s tasting it along the way. And she knows it needs a little bit of this or a little bit of that. That’s really our difference.
I’m happy that everything’s going well. Eventually, I want to open a few more locations, but I don’t want us to become a huge franchise or anything. I want to keep it within the family. I feel like once a restaurant gets too big, it loses that family aspect. Being a family really makes it more comfortable here, and I never want to lose that.
Felicidades to the Aquino’s family!
When one places an order at Aquino’s Birrieria, it’s easy to see what makes this restaurant so popular. Through the passion, perseverance, and motivation of Gustavo’s family, Pacific Grove enjoys some of the country’s most authentic Mexican cuisine. The Otter team is proud to support Aquino’s with our range of restaurant solutions. We’re eager for you to taste the family’s trendy, hand-made cuisine, too! The next time you’re in Monterey, swing by Aquino’s Birrieria for delicious tacos made with love.
🌐 Keep up with Aquino’s Birrieria on the restaurant’s Instagram, Facebook, and website.
