Pouring into the Community with Quesadilla Gorilla

POURING INTO THE COMMUNITY WITH QUESADILLA GORILLA

16 | www.EnjoySouthValley.com FALL 2021 Photos courtesy of Quesadilla Gorilla

QUESADILLA GORILLA is their name, slingin’ ‘dillas is their game and giving back is their fame. With four existing Gorilla locations and two new locations in the works, powerhouse couple Miguel and Mikayla Reyes continue making an impact in the community, all while raising a young family.

In the midst of the pandemic, Gorilla gave 15 percent off all orders for frontline hospital and healthcare workers. “We were also able to put up many precautions and procedures to keep our staff safe and employed while undergoing an unreal time of global layoffs,” Mikayla says.

When the devastating Creek Fire swept the Sierras in 2020, Gorilla partnered with the Bay Area food relief organization Off the Grid and fed almost 400 evacuees staying in hotels throughout Selma and Kingsburg.

While the couple pours out to the community, Mikayla says they are equally overwhelmed by the support they receive back. “This community has been our life blood,” she says. “When COVID hit, it was an invisible force between us all. We had a lot of businesses buying large amounts of quesadillas for hospital employees, people purchasing gift cards and merch just to keep us going. So much support on social media and by word of mouth, too. Our community means everything to us.”

Most recently, Gorilla joined Tulare County’s Salt + Light for a local event by donating 100 quesadillas to the homeless. In addition, the Fresno location donated 100 backpacks to a local school along with money toward feeding their students.

In other sizzling news, the newest Gorilla location in Tulare recently broke ground. The location is unique in that it shares space with Component

Coffee Lab, a local coffee shop Miguel and Mikayla co-own with Greg Amend and Jon Anderson. Gorilla and Component will have separate buildings with a large shared patio space and potentially a full margarita bar. “The Tulare project has been an unreal experience,” Miguel says. “We keep asking ourselves if this is a dream. It’s the first location we get to build from the ground up, designing everything. We are taking all our failures and successes from other locations and meshing them all together.” Open date is shooting for spring 2022.

As for the future, “Plans for Gorilla include a lot of expansion, but we’re also working on improving many of our current locations. For Visalia, we’re brainstorming what it looks like to get a larger space downtown with indoor seating and a full margarita bar.”

The couple says they couldn’t do any of it without the help of their incredible staff. “We joke that our DM, Christine Vermillion, loves Gorilla more than we do. We truly trust our crew and managers and know they carry our same values and mission. It’s unreal to have such a supportive team behind us.”•

Quesadilla Gorilla 302 W Main St., Visalia 608 E Weldon Ave., Fresno 41119 Sierra Dr., Three Rivers 102 W Seventh St., Hanford www.quesadillagorilla.com

Rachel Trigueiro, wife, mom of four and writer, spends her days homeschooling, cooking and reheating her coffee. As a child she dreamed of being a talk-show host and today sees others’ stories as a gift to be shared. When she’s not writing or dabbling in a creative venture, she loves spending time with her family.