The Fast Casual Nation Podcast offers exclusive interviews with experts ranging from top chefs and brand makers to executives and restaurants who work in one of the fastest-growing segments of the restaurant industry. In this episode, I chat with Austin Samuelson, co-founder and chief executive officer at Tacos 4 Life about the challenges of getting into the restaurant business and their mission to fight world hunger.

Samuelson talks about how he and his wife, Ashton heard a statistic in 2009 in reference to the number of children that were impacted by starvation and malnutrition worldwide and saw it as a solvable problem. Inspired by the efforts of the shoe brand TOMS, they set out to develop a brand where guests come together to create a world where starvation no longer exists.

Samuelson shares some of the struggles they were faced with in the beginning, including learning how to make pizzas in a commercial oven in the garage, while living in the basement of Samuelson’s parents, being turned down by banks multiple times and turning to a crowdfunding site for their first Tacos 4 Life. Samuelson says about that time, “We had no idea what we were doing, it was a really fun faith journey for us. It was a fun experiment, it was even fun learning how to do that as a married couple.”

Samuelson talks about how a trip to Africa where they volunteered and helped feed children gave them the drive to develop a new concept and a different type of cuisine. They went from a pizza restaurant to opening Tacos 4 Life finding a way to be profitable and still fight world hunger.

Tacos 4 Life in 2019 launched online ordering, which Samuelson says he was thankful for since they had not only launched online but had been developing a loyalty app too as the pandemic was starting. He says, “so we were really really fortunate to be able to lean into that and we saw our percentage of transactions going through the app, I mean just skyrocketed. Pre pandemic we were three percent online orders, whereas today we're bumping twenty percent and so that was an area we of course adapted curbside and are still leaning into curbside.”

To hear more about Tacos 4 Life’s mission, their pipeline of additional technologies, how they are coping with the impact of the labor shortage, and plans for expansion, listen to this episode of Fast Casual Nation on Apple Podcasts.