Daily Inspiration: Meet Jesse Moya

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jesse Moya.

Jesse, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
The concept for my Taco Trailer Moya’s Tacos started during COVID when I got fired from my job at Ian’s Pizza because of reasons related to COVID. After getting fired I basically said to myself that I didn’t want to work for anybody ever again. One night while unemployed I had a taco night and invited some friends. I tried a different style of tacos that I have never made before and had the ingredients I thought would taste good in head. So I headed to the closest carneceria near me and got all my ingredients from there (I still shop there exclusively for my product to this day). When my friends came over and tried these tacos they told me that I should sell these. This gave me the idea to start a taco pop-up. As soon as I gathered as much info about my new business that I needed I started reaching out to breweries via Instagram to see if they would give me a shot to sell my tacos at their location.

I basically said that I’d bring them free lunch one day so they could try my tacos and we could go from there. The ONLY brewery that sent me back an actual response was River North brewery (I’m also pretty exclusive to them to this day). After being given the opportunity to have the brewery and staff try my tacos they told me they were willing to let me try selling at their Blake St location on 3400 Blake St (where I still keep my trailer). After the first day of selling tacos (which was an absolute success by the way), the brewery decided to let us sell there as much as we wanted to. At the time, I just had a pop-up set up with a tent, griddle, coolers, etc. but recently (earlier this summer) I was able to purchase a fully loaded food trailer to sell my tacos out of thanks to the help of a bunch of my customers, a gofundme campaign that we launched, and a couple of events we did to try and raise money. I am still selling tacos at River North brewery and it’s been about a year since I started the business. It’s going very well so far!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s been mostly a smooth road. The only struggle I went through at first was smaller stuff. I had trouble figuring out how to actually start/run the business; I was great at making tacos but owning a business was totally new to me. I was the marketing director at Ian’s Pizza so marketing was actually pretty easy for me. Other things like my tent set up was a struggle sometimes too; bringing all of my equipment to the brewery every week multiple times a week, and weather conditions that didn’t agree with my setup sucked. I also struggled with trying to find out how to get my food license with my tent set up and figured out that getting a trailer was the only way I could get my food license so everything that let up to trying to get my trailer was a struggle, but not that bad, it only took us a year to get it. I would also say that running the 1 man crew is hard sometimes unless I’m able to get help from friends. I think I’m still figuring out stuff until this day as far as running my business, but I believe it keeps getting better and better and things start to become easier.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
So if it wasn’t already obvious, I sell tacos at my taco trailer, Moya’s Tacos. It is a smaller concept that (for now) sticks to 3 menu items that rotate sometimes (all of the items are tacos). I think I make terrific food that people absolutely love; we were voted top 5 tacos in Denver Westword magazine recently. I think what makes us so special is the place where we get all of our ingredients, the carneceria. I think for only being open one year we are most known for our Elote taco which is a Mexican street corn taco (vegetarian). I also think that this taco is what I’m most proud of. I got the idea from a buddy and kind of made it my own as far as the ingredients that go on this taco and how it’s constructed. I would have to say that I am also most known for and proud of my homemade marinade that we dip our tortillas in just before we grill them. I think what sets apart our taco trailer from the other 100’s of taco trucks, restaurants, etc. is our style of tacos; they’re just different. We dip the tortillas in a house-made marinade that nobody else has. We have a WAYYY smaller menu than the other places, but everything is PERFECTED; when you have a smaller menu you are able to really take the time to make everything on that menu perfect. Our trailer is super small and it’s pretty much a 1 man crew business. I think we really like to see ourselves as part of the community (the RiNo community) as well and we’re not just another trailer that travels around everywhere; I think it’s one of our focuses to be a staple in the RiNo community, something that everybody knows loves and keeps coming back to.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
There has been no luck in life for me or my business. Everything has been hard work and a lot of hustle. Nothing has ever been handed to me. My single mother passed away when I was 15 years old and I didn’t come from a wealthy family whatsoever so I had to literally do everything myself since I was younger. I think the only “luck” that we had was how successful our gofundme campaign was to raise money for the food trailer, but even then there was a ton of hard work that was put into making that campaign successful. It’s been a hard road, but everything is getting a little easier and the business is going well so far.

Pricing:

• Fajitas Tacos (and what they rotate from) are $4 each
• Al Pastor Tacos are $3.75 each
• Elote Tacos are $3.50 each

Contact Info:

• Website: moyastacos.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/moyastacos
• Facebook: facebook.com/moyastacos