When you ask for the Taco Lady in Lagos, only one person comes to mind. Uzo Umeh who owns and runs El Padrino, Nigeria’s first casual dining Mexican restaurant chain, preaches the gospel of tacos and the possibilities of combining Mexican cuisine with Nigerian ingredients. PiggyVest chatted with Uzo about leaving finance to start her own food business, building a brand that lasts and investing in her community.
Hi Uzo, could we get to know you a bit better?
My name is Uzo Umeh. People call me the “Taco Lady,” and I gladly accept. I sell tacos for a living at El Padrino, I love bringing people together, and I love what I do.
How did you become the taco lady?
Basically, I moved back to Nigeria for the first time in 2014. I was working with the VFD group, which was a startup at the time. At the time, Bottles Restaurant was the only restaurant in all of Lagos that sold Mexican food. They were doing great, but they were a full-service restaurant; it was not the kind of place you could go to eat Mexican food casually.
After six months of being in Lagos, I realised it would be a great idea to start a business selling tacos. I started preaching the gospel of tacos and Mexican food, and before long, people started calling me the “Taco Lady.” I was a little worried about it at first, but my brother advised me to lean into it. It was good branding.
Why Mexican food?
I grew up in Lagos and moved to California when I was 13. There, I was exposed to the Mexican-Hispanic community and fell in love with Mexican culture, especially its food. The way Mexicans embraced me and introduced me to their culture reminded me of Nigeria.
When I came back, I didn’t realise how much people didn’t care for tacos.
Nigerians are notorious for being unadventurous with food. How did you convince so many Nigerians to experiment with and grow to love Mexican food?
It’s a good thing that Nigerians love our food and our culture, but we can be a little too rigid about possibilities. I have some new staff, and because they joined us in year seven when we have a large base of patrons, they think Mexican food is widely accepted. Then we go to pop-ups and see how dismissive Nigerians can be of things they aren’t familiar with. It is a good reminder of how much we are up against.
This reminder is important because my goal is to make tacos as ubiquitous in Nigeria as the Lebanese shawarma in the next 20 years.
El Padrino tries to expand the possibilities of Nigerian ingredients through Mexican food, and that familiarity is our hook. We also want our food to be as authentic to Mexican cuisine as possible to match the vibe we have created in our space. We have been hard at work building our brand from the ground up for about seven years, and we are starting to see results.
You left paid employment to start El Padrino in 2017. What was the biggest mind shift you had to make for this transition?
Before I joined VFD in 2014, I worked in the food service industry in the US, so I’d always had a keen interest in food. My time there was instrumental in my decision to enter the food industry. After I decided I wanted to start my Mexican food business, I left my job at VFD and went back to the US to become a general manager at the food business where I had worked, gaining more experience before I quit in 2017 to return to Nigeria and start my own business.
What that time taught me was that the best food businesses are run and managed by people who have worked their way up the food value chain. And that has helped me build a business that I, my team and my patrons identify with strongly.
How Chef Human Rebuilt His Life & Business After A Very Dark Episode
The El Padrino Whatsapp Group is almost as legendary as the brand itself. How did it come about?
When we first started our business, we had a weekly pop-up called Taco Tuesday. But nobody came for Taco Tuesday; sometimes, we’d only get four people the entire evening. But at one of those pop-ups in January 2018, our 15 guests got into a very heated debate about Tyler Perry’s Acrimony. I made a video during the debate and shared it online, and everyone kept asking where that was and if they could come the next time.
Over the next three months, I realised people didn’t just come for the food; they also came for the authentic conversations, which got very animated but never malicious. We had to create the WhatsApp group because our OG Padrinos asked for it.
Since we created the group in 2019, we’ve kept things very small because we want to preserve the authenticity and open-mindedness that inspired us to open it in the first place. Each person in the group brings a unique perspective, which makes the experience better for everyone. We even had our first Padrino wedding in 2023, and of course, there was a taco section.
Community is a big part of what makes El Padrino unique. How have you grown your community from your pop-up days to today?
What I’m trying to do with Nigeria is long-term, and for that to work, I have to convince our patrons to not only see our vision but embrace us as part of their community and culture. Because El Padrino is investing in our community, I am willing to make some short-term sacrifices, like stabilising our prices and opening our space to our community, to make long-term returns.
We have a chess community, which has become a pipeline through which we have found staff who share our values. We also have an art community run by the artist Dricky, which appeals to our Gen-Z patrons who can enjoy the sip-and-paint experience that would easily cost them ₦20,000 elsewhere.
I left Nigeria when I was 13, and apart from 2 childhood friends, all the people I consider my friends now are customers I met working at El Padrino. So it is really fulfilling to see generations of Padrinos experience the kind of community that El Padrino has brought into my life.
You started as a weekly pop-up/delivery service but made the switch to a full-time physical space in 2021. Why did you decide to take this step?
It felt like the next logical step in our growth. I didn’t come back to Nigeria to run a pop-up business. I came to build a Mexican fast-casual chain of restaurants. I didn’t want to start a restaurant this big, but the people who offered us a space to start our first physical restaurant convinced us this was the right step to take and the right time to do it.
Our VI location was our way of improving the Padrino experience, and our recently opened location in Ikeja was an answer to the question: How can we deliver fresh tacos on the mainland?
Women & Money: Chef Neny Always Knew She Would Own A Business
Running a business is hard, especially in Nigeria. How do you future-proof your business against economic anyhowness?
There is a Will Smith quote that has inspired me since I was a teenager: ‘If you put me on a treadmill with someone, one of two things will happen: either he gets off or I die on this treadmill.’
My basic philosophy is that I don’t quit, and I stay hungry. El Padrino is not too big for any opportunity, not too good for anyone, not above sending weekly broadcasts about El Padrino for five straight years. If there is an opportunity to make ₦10,000 that will cost me ₦3,000, I will take it.
I don’t think it’s possible to fully future-proof our business, but we have spent the last five years building a strong foundation for our brand that we are proud of, online and offline. We think like a sports team, and a sports team never gives up. They focus on winning and adapt to change.
Do you have a preferred method of saving?
At El Padrino, we practice a principle called ‘Profit First’. When revenue comes in, we always take out profit, even if there is no profit. We always pay ourselves first and put something away, regardless of what the margins say. Sometimes, profit first is as simple as leaving money in a specific account and not pouring it back into the business for a period of time.
We are blessed to have enough cash flow seven years in to feel stable, but we are not quite in the stage to think about investing, so our current goal is to always have enough savings to handle any challenges that come in.
How Tosin Samuel’s Viral Recipes Earn Her Millions On Social Media
Do you have a long-term savings/investment strategy for staying financially secure through your career and after?
My strategy is to stack up enough savings to weather any storms before I start investing. Even though I worked in the finance industry, I’m not very sophisticated in investing. So, I listened to experts and invested in stocks in the S&P 500. I have had a few doubts about if I invested too early, but I really feel proud when I check my investments and see how much they have grown since I took the decision
At the end of this year, El Padrino is considering moving into investing, specifically in projects that will be beneficial to us and our customers.
Are there any financial decisions you have made over the course of your career that you are very proud of?
In 2021, my parents sat me down for a talk. My dad said, ‘Uzo, you don’t like coming home after work, not because you like work, but because you don’t have a TV.’ And he was right, because once I did, now I rush home to watch my comfort shows. His advice was for me to enjoy the fruits of my labour because anything can happen. Taking his advice and seeing how that improved the quality of my life is something I’m proud of.
Ironically, that talk was necessary because I had been very frugal in my personal life and at El Padrino. I’m very proud of that. At El Padrino, we have been decisively frugal in our operations, and worked very hard to save money in every part of the process of running our business. That has freed up money for me to invest in my staff, ensuring they have benefits and health insurance, giving them dignity and allowing them to serve our patrons with a lot of confidence.
Were there any financial mistakes you made at the beginning of your journey that you wish you could correct now?
As a business, we have made some choices over the years that other people see as net positive, but I consider negative. I regret them because we felt our backs were against the wall; we needed to act immediately instead of taking some time to consider our options.
The avocado symbol is our brand logo because the Avocado tree takes between 5 and 13 years to bear its first fruit. When we chose the logo, we were in our fifth year in business and thought we had arrived. But like the avocado tree, I’m learning to be more patient. Our logo reminds us to trust our steps, take our time, and work towards our long-term goals.
Where do you see El Padrino in 5 years?
I get excited when I think of the near future. In 2021, El Padrino did a tour of Carlifornia. I haven’t been able to go back, even though we’ve had many requests to return. But I am taking time to build our brand so we have a strong platform to grow.
By the grace of God, if everything happens as we’ve planned, I definitely see El Padrino becoming one of the fastest-growing hospitality brands in Nigeria. I see us opening branches across Lagos and expanding into other states. But all of that will be possible if we take over Lagos.
What financial tips would you give to Uzo in 2017, just starting her business?
I’m reading a book by Dave Ramsey. He has a lot of ambitious ideas, but there is this quote that I’m really resonating with right now: ‘Overspending that doesn’t feel like overspending when times are good is still overspending.’ Just because things are up and all is well doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t save and invest.
Save more money before you start your business; that will keep you from making decisions because you feel your back is against the wall.
Profit first, always make sure you pay yourself even if you feel that there isn’t money for it. And sometimes, it’s okay to owe somebody for one business cycle as long as you have a plan to pay in the next cycle. Make sure you always have enough to take care of yourself and put a little away for a rainy day.
