As an ondontologist he worked “well” in the City of Buenos Aires, he had “some savings” gathered and the “need” to rethink personal and environmental issues led him to leave Argentina. When, In 2010, he commented that he would go “outside” to his relatives it seemed “crazy”.
Mario Vivas, 33, managed to build an event organization and catering company in New York in which he managed to bill and allowed him to be “comfortable”, but the coronavirus left him “without work from one day to the next.”
A In mid-March, a week started with 24 events planned and on Thursday “there was nothing left standing”. He decided that “as an Argentine accustomed to crises, he had to find the opportunity.” In December opened in Columbus Circus a place of empanadas “criollas”. To do so, he convinced two local investors.
He says that he chose New York because it seemed a city “compatible” with his personality, “vibrant energetic” and underlines that he did not aspire to change his pace of life, but to put himself “to the test”. “I didn’t have a specific plan, I did train myself in everything that the university hadn’t given me; learn the language, learn to look for new resources. It was not the idea to perfect myself in my profession,” Vivas says to THE NATION-. It took time to insert myself and do the papers. “
In his different jobs until he opened his business, he was even Beyoncé’s assistant manager. One more anecdote to add. For two years worked with a well-known wedding planner in the city. “I learned a lot, what to do and what not to do and at a certain point I thought I could advance on my own. She let me go, she was happy for me,” she describes. in 2016 my event agency was born. In four years I grew up. “
Vivas explains that work in the area has high and low seasons and that the public considers and privileges those who “specialize” in any activity. In his case, it covered corporate events and private parties. “When Covid-19 arrived, it was not that it began to fall – hopefully – but that it was a movie. In three days, 24 events were canceled of all kinds, from California weddings to weekly business client meetings. “
He understands that the most valuable thing about his experience is how to reinvent himself. “Those months reminded me of my first year in New York, when uncertainty dominated, adrenaline for what was to come. Feeling a certain fear for what was to come, for the unknown.”
So that his regular customers would not forget his name, he began to cook and bring them food. He started the recipes of his grandmother Stella, with whom he lived while studying.
“I noticed that what we do not perceive as great things because they are part of our folklore, of our life, impacts others,” he recalls. In those food deliveries, part of your marketing campaign, they asked him what was the best thing he cooked. He did not hesitate: empanadas. He cooked them and they ate them and in that meeting convinced two investors that with about $ 120,000 they could start a business that would work.
“They asked how we ate them, because for them the empanadas were girls, a snack “. That is why the ones sold in” Criollas “are larger, aim to be a lunch, for example, with a soup. That is one of the proposals.
By bicycle, at the time of the tightest quarantine in New York, he looked for a place. It had to be a place of passage for people when life was normalized and, at the same time, it had to be safe both for the tranquility of them and their clients. “From Central Station (where a rent is around US $ 14,000) to Brooklyn I went all over until this market appeared in Columbus Circle; closed the place and the price. “They opened on December 1.
Vivas admits that empanadas are part of the “fantasy of every Argentinian who goes abroad, it is a kind of cliché to think that ‘triumph’ can come from there“He points out and immediately adds:” In the midst of a pandemic it is not serious to speak of ‘success’, it is not very cautious. It did happen that the conditions were in place for that project that was always in the air. “
These days the strength for the seven varieties of empanadas is take away. From the 14 next in New York the possibility of sitting in bars and restaurants will return, although the “Criollas” place is small.
They bet on the sale online, buy for freezar. “We were surprised by the growth; at the local our goal is to sell 300 units a day, we still have a little to do, but online it works excellent. An attraction that the public values is that we support suppliers who are young like us, we buy in local farms and everything is organic. “
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