From Fired High School Dropout… To Owning D.C.’s Best Taco Chain!

00:00:10
Speaker 1: This is Our American Stories. If you’ve ever been around Washington, D.C., you can find food trucks and stands on almost every imaginable corner selling almost everything. Osiris Hoil was one of the many in Arlington, Virginia, to run such as stand, but one of few to turn it into a successful restaurant. Jane called District Taco. Monte Montgomery brings us the story. Here’s Osiris.

00:00:40
Speaker 2: My name is Osirus Hoyle. I’m from Yucata, Mexico, and I learned how to cook with my mom. Every single day she will wake me up and ask me what I wanted to eat. But, of course, I had to help her. My mom, she’s extremely picky, but that’s why her food is so delicious. She used to send me to the yard, right? And I’ll pick tomatoes, have an arrows, anything that she needed for her meal. And I’ll come with tomatoes, and she fills them, and she’s like, “Nope, this is not right.” And I’m like, “What a mean is now? It looks good!” And she’ll feel it, and she’s like, “Feel it, you know, and so soft!” And for me, it looked fine. You know, the same thing with limes. She would just see it and feel it, and she’s like, “No, it’s not good.” You have to go get more. These standards were so high, and since then, my standards are high. In Mexico, you cannot choose what kind of life you want to live, you know what I mean? I remember that I didn’t know I was poor until I met, you know, rich kids. When I went to my friends, probably when I was maybe fourteen, thirteen years old, I realized that they had the toys and games, or they have better bathrooms than we did. And then I was like, “Man, I think, you know, we struggle.” So, when I came to the United States with a tourist visa and I decided to stay. When I was two thousand, I was working as a discwasher. You know, I was making minimum wage at that point. And I met my wife at work, and she was the waitress, and I needed to learn English so I can ask her out, right? So I decided to learn this system. And I used to work at this restaurant bar in Denver, Colorado. And even though I was underage, they let me stay at the bar, right? Because I was helping them with the cake, you know, and bringing in. And I wasn’t drinking, but I stay at the bar talking to drunk people. They were my best teachers. I remember, you know. I was asking questions like, “How do you say this?” And then I’ll write it down. And for some reason they, I think, they felt important, you know what I mean? I don’t know. If you’re drinking every day at the bar, something going on, right? So they felt important. I think they liked the way that I was asking them questions. And they were my best teachers, you know. I mean, the first week I thought, “Oh, they’re gonna hate it,” and now I was. I was very welcome, and I did it for several years. But it got to the point where my birthday, Jamie Ferd said, “Hey, what are you doing today? You want to go for lunch?” And I was like, “Yeah, I cancel everything,” and, you know, so I went for it. I was asking her out during that time for two years, three years, I think. And she never accepted it for some reason, probably because my English wasn’t that good. But I was trying, right? And since then, we got married, and now we have three kids, and it was great. And two thousand and six, we moved to D.C., you know, because things were going well, and I was excited to try something new. And I found this construction job that I was paying a lot more than if I was just a cook. So that was great. You know, I took the job even though I didn’t have that much experience. But the construction company saw my potential all day. They saw that I could do more than just be a service guy, or so they sent me to school so I can learn how to read blueprints. And for me, I started seeing the potential to be something else than just a cook, you know, in the kitchen, something professional, where I can be the superintendent the company, and I can run projects. And I felt good. Everything was going well.

00:04:41
Speaker 3: You know.

00:04:42
Speaker 2: I did projects where I actually was finishing before schedule, under budget, working my butt off, and I felt like, “Oh yeah, bonuses were coming!” This is great. So, we buy our house in two thousand and seven, and then, and, you know, we had a baby. Everything was going so well, but in two thousand and eight, I got laid off when the economy was really, really bad. I still remember that moment because it was on a Friday afternoon. I was sweeping the project because everybody just was leaving, and I like to keep my projects clean for the weekend. And the actual owner of the company came, and he gave me the news. It was very emotional. I started crying. I never had never been fired before, and, you know, I asked for my job back. My health insurance was through the company, and I just… I felt defeated. I felt not being a man anymore, the man that my parents raised, the kid. You know, all these responsibilities, all my hard work. What just happened? I didn’t understand it. So I said, “Look, just pay me whatever you want.” Pay me. “Okay, just keep me on the on payroll, but keep my insurance.” Right? My wife, she’s pregnant. We’ll, we’ll figure out later. And they just couldn’t keep me on under payroll. I took my truck, drove away, and I had to park in a parking lot. I was actually crying that moment, because how I’m gonna go to my wife right now and told her that I just lost my job? I’m gonna do that? I’ve never been prepared for these moments, right? I have a house, a kid, she’s pregnant, and what I’m gonna say? So I went to her job. I said, “Jenny, I need to talk to you,” and I had to said, “I got… I got laid off. I got fire.” And the only thing that she came out of her mouth, she hugged me, and she said, “Don’t worry. We’ll be okay.” Man, that was, that was so powerful, you know, that was so powerful. For six months, seven months, maybe, I was an employeed. I was looking for a construction job because I knew I know how to read blueprints now, but there was nothing available. I was getting depressed, all right. I was getting extremely depressed because I don’t have a job. I’m babysitting my son. But in the weekends, I will invite my friends so we can have some beers and make Carnesa sallas and this sells us so. But my friends, you know, used to say, “Oh, sorryus, this is so good!” “You should bottle this, you know, and sell it and all my units.” And I’m like, “I’ll go home and I’ll tell my wife.” I think we, I think people like my food. We might have something going on here. So then, then I was making it for Mark Wallace two.

00:08:06
Speaker 3: A man who would go on to have a profound impact on Osirus’s life.

00:08:13
Speaker 2: You know, when we move in. I remember that day when he was trying to put his play set or for his kids, and I offer my help, and we became very good friends, and he loved my food. He always said, “Oh, Cyrus, should open your restaurant.” And there was one day I was drinking beer and eating savita with Mark, and he said, “Hey, Cyrus, do you know, all the time when I go to Austin, Texas, there’s always food trucks, right? And they sell these amazing Mexican food, breakfast tacos, you know, and all that, and he’s so delicious.” And it’s like he turns around, and it’s like, “Cyrus, do you want to do it?” And I’m like, “Well, yeah, if, you know, I mean, the food truck, there’s a lot of money, you know, but the tackles stand…” It’s only twenty-five thousand dollars. And it’s like, “Well, if you want to do it, I’ll give you the money.” And I’m like, “Wait, you want to give me the money?” You know? I was like, “What person give you, you know, that much money?” First of all, I didn’t finish my high school. Okay. I went home, and I couldn’t believe it, right? I talked to my wife about it, and at that point, I didn’t have anything else going on. So I went back to Mark, and I said, “Let’s do it! Let’s do it, and let’s do it!”

00:09:42
Speaker 1: Indeed, and what a story this is so far! When we come back, more from Osiris Hoyle and District Taco, and how that all happened here on Our American Stories. And we returned with Our American Stories and the story of Osiris Boil. We had just been given a generous gift from his friend Mark Wallace to start his own taco stand, and at the lowest point of his life, here’s Osiris.

00:10:28
Speaker 2: We bought the taco stand, you know, we named District Taco, and it was born in two thousand and nine. And I went straight to Rosslyn, Rosslyn, Virginia. That was the first place we went. And I didn’t do any research. The only thing I knew: there were big buildings. That’s all what I knew. I’m like, “Oh, there’s big buildings, there’s a lot of people here, and we’re going to be here!” But there was Chipole right next door to me, okay, and there was Baha Fresh, all right. So I was in the middle, man. I was like, “What I’m doing here?” I’m dead! But, you know, like I said before, I’m a great sales guy, and I think I can… I can sell tacos, and I made pretty good tacos. It started to two people inside the cart, and I was the cashier. I had one full runner, one guy that was helping us, you know, and someone else that it was just making sure nothing is missing. The first week, we started making breakfast tacos, you know, in the morning, in the morning, six a.m., right? And he wasn’t working. You know, people around D.C. don’t know about breakfast tacos. But in Mexico, we always eat tacos with eggs, you know. So, so be it, you know, and I grew up with it. But people run here preferred, you know, a bagel or a donut or, you know, or I don’t know, or something else, right, for breakfast, not a breakfast tacos. So he said, “Okay, well, breakfast is now… it’s not helping me all the way, you know.” “Let me. Let me stay introducing what I’m really good at.” For lunch, people don’t want to eat breakfast tackles. “So I’m gonna start making puyo saldo.” The other day, I was making moli poblano. Every single day, I was changing the menu, just like how my mom would asked me, “What do you want to eat today?” I was changing it, right? And I figured out, also, “Okay, I want to… I want to make my carnals sada.” So I pretty much welded a grill that I bought a Home Depot, you know, just like a small grill. So I was grilling, you know, in front of people, when people walking into their jobs to the office. Man, we’re grilling out there, right? We’re grilling or salt sas. We had a table where were blending the saltsas, you know, we’re roasting or tomatoes and everything. There was a party. Oh my goodness, not everything, you know, work perfectly. For two months, I wasn’t making any money because I pretty much was making everything fresh. So I was making my guacamola fresh. I was making my pickle of the io fresh. So I was going to a Restaurant Depot every single day, and I’ll get back, watch the tacos tand, and drop everything, eat dinner with my family, and then cook whatever. It takes a long time, and my refrigerator full of avocados. And my wife didn’t like that very much, but she knew that that was the only option we had. Here’s another thing. I used to drink so I can go sleep, so I’ll have like a couple of beers. Write, one beer. And one night I was cooking the beans, and I turned the TV on, right, was like eight p.m. I fall asleep. Family was sleeping, so around eleven o’clock. I don’t know about you, but when you burn beans—I don’t know if you’ve done this before—but it smells so bad, right? Just the smell is really bad. And I woke up, and I’m like, “Oh my UITs, what I’ve done!” Where a waste of product? You know, it’s money, and I couldn’t just burned the house, my family. You know, what I’m doing? And I was pretty angry, but at that moment, you know, I was extremely tired, extremely disappointed, right? And I was just praying because I was like, “What I’m doing? I’m just wasting my time here! Okay, I almost burned the house.” I’m extremely tired, I’m overweight because, you know, it’s just I’ve been eating a lot of exercising, working long, long, long hours, and this is, I don’t know, this is not working. So I was praying, and I said, “God should send me a message because I don’t know what else to do.” And then my daughter started crying, and I remember I was like, “I guess that’s the message. I have to continue, you know, for the family.” Right. So I tie my shoes and get back to work.

00:15:06
Speaker 3: Location. Location, Location. It’s something real to say matters in the value of a house or a property. But it also turns out it matters if you own, say, a food truck or a taco stand—a movable location. And it became the key to Osirus’s success.

00:15:27
Speaker 2: So we used to set up so early. And what we used to set up is the ABC Channel Seven. We used to get there like five point fifty, and the weather man will get out, right, start telling you about the weather. And, but, and then we’re cooking bacon, right? Oh man, we’re cooking bacon! And I don’t know about you, but when you’re cooking bacon, oh, it’s not so good. Right. So he’s… he always talk about us like a six a.m. It’s like he’ll turn the cameras, you know, and we’re cooking bacon and were like saying, ‘Hi,’ you know. And that was, oh man, that was great, great time. So things were going so good. There were long lines to order from us. We were like six people in the tacos and working, and we probably served about two hundred people, and the actual press start writing about us. And from being laid off to have a tacos then, I think there was a wake-up call that actually it can be done. And then I, you know, came to my business partner, Mark Wallace, and I say, ‘Hey, Mark, I think we got something going on right here!’ Let’s just open a restaurant. We opened the restaurant in twenty ten in Arlington, Virginia, and from there, you know, we bought a lot of equipment from Craigslist, so we pretty much built the restaurants by ourselves. But we didn’t know what we were doing. I remember reviews online that said, “Don’t think because you came from attack, because then you’re going to be able to control a restaurant.” But those reviews, I remember, I was like, “Okay, just wait. I’m going to show you!” And then after a year, we felt like, “Okay, we have a model.” And then we hire for second store in D.C. We hire contractors, okay, to build that store. But then I was like, “Well, you know, maybe I should call the guys up, you know, lay me off and see if they want to work with me.” So I went and I hired them back. It’s funny, because I used to be their employee; now I’m their client. That the way things work out, right? And from there, you know, now we have twelve stores open and over just a little bit over four hundred and fifty employees, and we’re going from there. You know, I think all my life is always being about what older people had and we didn’t have. And I think I’m really thankful that I didn’t have it at all in the beginning.

00:18:03
Speaker 1: And a great job, as always, to Monty Montgomery. And my goodness, what a story! And it’s every immigrant story is, in some ways, the same, right, from different places. This story started in Yucatan, Mexico. But learned about standards from his mom. He’d come in with a tomato from the garden, and she’d just shake her head. And I know that feeling, because my father, my grandfather, was a great cook, and I’d go out to the garden and bring it a tomato, and he’d shake his head. And to this day, I do it now to my daughter. Thoh, standards get passed along, folks. And by the way, he said, “In Mexico, you can’t choose the life you want to lead.” And so we came to the United States versus a dishwasher, earning minimum wage, and built a family, learned a new trade, started that food truck thanks to the generosity of a friend. And look where we are in this story. And it’s a story that happens time and again in this great country. Osiris Hoyle’s story, District Taco’s story, have one in D.C. Here on Our American Stories.