Saturday, January 8, 2011

The birth of La Gabacha


I have long dreamt of owning my own restaurant. Nothing fancy, little more than a taco shop but different, hipper, more my style. A little tradition steeped in contemporary Mexican culture.  A little more vale desmadre (worth chaos or devil may care), surely a heap of VIVA la RAZA.  I stay up nights documenting in my head, specials, menus, drinks, music, artwork.  
But... the one element of this desire that leaves me fetal in the corner mumbling numbers like rainman is money. The kind with lots of zeros, the kind the likes of myself has no link to.  I log my fifty hours a week, I make my rent, and I pay as much of my bills on time as I can. But I watch my credit wheeze and cough begging resuscitation and stare at my savings with great determination in hopes that I can will the numbers upward.  
Investors, financiers, returns, interests, shares... the thought makes me loopy.  How do I get it? How do a pay it back? And how does anyone make money? 

In honor of 2011: the year I find my joy, I am dedicating my spare minutes to finding things out.  Why let a little ignorance get in the way? No one else does! 

So... I leap, in hopes that the net will appear!!!

First course of action: The business plan.  From what I gather, very important.  Easy enough, I have the idea, I know how to budget food and labor and I am passionate about my ideas. So, off to the internet I go. 
Lessons learned: sites that say they have free templates often do not.  There are a lot of people out there that want to sell you their 'turn key' plan for business.  Come to find out I already have the information and data I need, I just have to get it out of my head and onto the screen.
1st Question: Business name?  Easy,  La Gabacha = it means 'white girl' 
appropriate I would say as I am clearly not Mexican, and it sort of rolls off the toungue and sounds like biting into a hard shell taco, or a forbidden dance. Really, it's what I was called while traveling through Mexico and working at Frontera. I liked it, it stuck.
2nd Question: Your company logo? Now here others might think; get the data done, work on the hard numbers first, the artwork will come later. NOPE! not me, the need for a logo spurred a three hour creative endeavour that after much consideration has become what i think is a great beginning to a memorable and approchable logo.

The Birth of La Gabacha:
La Gabacha mas Chida: the coolest white girl
 She's pretty cool right? I am not alone in my love for Mexican pop and folk art, Dia de los Muertos, sugar skulls, and the artwork of Jose Gudalupe Posada .  I am also a fan of Craftychica.com. Kathy Murillo and her husband Patrick make amazing chicano pop art, hopefully it will adorn the walls of 'La Gabacha'. 
My name, Cameo, has bequethed me a knack for collecting cameos, so I came up with the idea that it would be a posada style skull in the style of the traditional cameo relief.  The flowers are marigold used in all sorts of festivities and the knife and fork? well that should be obvious.  It will need some color later on but for now I think she'll do.  

 
 
 
On to question # 3
Let me know what you think and I will keep you posted on further adventures in business plan writing.