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Mesa taco shop weathers economic challenges
BY MARK MORAN Tribune Staff Writer
In the best of times, Pedro Contreras sells about 1,000 meat tacos a week at Pedrito’s Mexican Food, his small taco shop on the corner of Country Club Drive and Main Street in Mesa.
“Whatever meat you are thinking, I’ve got it here,” he brags. “Lingua, cabeza, and pollo, pastor and chorizo are among the most popular. But forget the Mexican staple, tripes, at your culinary peril.”
But these are not the best of times.
“It’s terrible,” Contreras, 48, said. “People are working full-time but it’s hard to fill up the gas two times a week. It’s expensive. Not only me. Everyone feels the prices.”
Like everyone else, Contreras is feeling the inflationary pinch on goods and services.
“It’s a family business, so the family is working more,” he said.
Gas and grocery prices, as well as other economic demands on his customers’ wallets have driven business down, and he is selling about half that much meat now.
“I’ve still got a lot of meats so it’s still a lot of prep,” he said.
His meat comes from various local sources, and because it has to be trucked in, his suppliers’ higher gas prices mean that he pays more to get his meat delivered. He has had to raise his prices to keep up with the cost of doing business.
“I changed the prices because I need it,” he said. “I need to pay my rent and buy more food. I’ve still got a lot of good customers who come every day. Not like before, though. It’s hard.”
Things were just starting to pick up post pandemic when this recent spike in the cost of living came tumbling down.
Pedro Contreras came to the United States from Mexico City in 1992. He has worked at various restaurants, washing dishes, mopping floors, working in the prep kitchen, whatever needed to be Pedro and Rosa Contreras own Pedrito’s Mexican Food near downtown Mesa. (Mark Moran/Tribune Staff)
done. But he was always watching.
Finally, in 2014, after picking up tips of the cooking trade here and there along the way, he opened Pedrito’s in 2014.
Contreras is no stranger to hard times.
Business has been a series of setbacks, one after another, it would seem. He, like other business owners, was forced to deal with COVID and all the restrictions that came with it. Pedrito’s dining area was closed to the public.
The staff inside, all family members, wore masks while they prepped food, took orders over the phone, cooked and boxed up to-go orders.
The business shifted entirely to the drive-thru, which Contreras credits for surviving the pandemic.
“I stayed open because of my drivethru,” Contreras said. “People came and picked it up and boom. They’re gone. I was busy at the window.”
Rosa, his wife, added, “the entire family worked hard. The littlest one was even in the back, peeling shrimp. They loved it!” The business couldn’t afford any employees at the time, so it became a family affair.
While a natural disaster in the form of a global pandemic would seem hard to top, the biggest hurdle that Contreras has had to clear was a manmade infrastructure improvement project in the way of the Valley Metro light rail project.
That crippled Pedrito’s almost beyond saving.
“Access to my business was really blocked and closed off. It was all closed down around here. My drive-thru was completely closed,” he said.
While the light rail was a huge economic development project for the City of Mesa, it put his family under terrible economic distress.
His wife Rosa was by his side for that and the other trials that Pedrito’s has faced.
“It’s hard,” she said, “because we’ve got a lot of kids. I have had to help him take care of the business, take care of the family, take care of the house. So that part has been hard. But now, the kids are growing up and help us. So, it has been hard, but good.” Despite the inflationary pressures that Pedrito’s is currently facing, Contreras sees a glimmer of hope on the horizon.
“It’s starting to pick up a little,” he said. “People are starting to show up again and gas prices are going down a little.”
They have two employees now so the entire family doesn’t have to be working in the restaurant non-stop.
The family is still there, though, Pedro and Rosa, their kids, grandkids and other relatives. Together, they create a bustling sense that the place is busy even when there aren’t many paying customers inside.
There is a warm, welcoming and relaxed atmosphere, with the family’s lives carrying on right out in the open, blurring the lines between the business and the family.
The grandkids eating ice cream, cousins and uncles reminiscing and reflecting on their day and Pedro always in and out of the kitchen to keep an eye on his
money-maker.
Despite the series of struggles, there has never been a time when Pedro Contreras believed he wouldn’t make it. “I came with a vision and a dream to have a better life for my family. I have always had faith that I would be able to do it.
“If you build yourself something in this life, you will be able to do it if you try hard enough. You need to eat, you know?” he said.
Pedro Contreras opened his taco shop in 2014 after saving hard-earned tips as a waiter for more than 10 years. (Mark Moran/Tribune Staff)
Pedrito’s
311 W. Main St., Mesa; order food at pedritosmexicanfood.com, 480-255-4301.
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