Slow-Cooked Success | Turning a Food Truck Into a Growing Family Business

By Lisa Loewen
Photos by Brian Peters

On any given weekend, a line of customers begins to form outside El Zócalo’s food truck. They’re eager for steaming bowls of birria ramen, crispy birria egg rolls, quesabirria tacos and other menu items containing the slow-cooked beef that has become a local favorite.

Some of those customers are regulars who know exactly what they’ll order before they reach the window. Others are curious first-timers who heard about the truck through friends, coworkers or social media.

For owners Nancy and Francisco Lopez, every customer is proof of how far the business has come.

Just three years ago, the couple was still working full-time jobs while trying to build their food truck business on the weekends. Nancy managed her father’s auto glass company, where she had spent nearly two decades learning what it meant to be an entrepreneur. Francisco worked as a tire technician, spending long hours at work before coming home to help prepare food for a business that, at the time, existed only as a hopeful side hustle.

Neither imagined that one day they would leave the security of full-time jobs, employ their own staff, serve hundreds of customers every week and watch their daughter launch a second El Zócalo food truck in Lawrence while attending college.

LEARNING ENTREPRENEURSHIP EARLY

At 18, fresh out of high school, Nancy Lopez joined her father as he launched his own auto glass company. Because he spoke primarily Spanish, Nancy became the person who answered phones, handled customers, managed paperwork and gradually learned every aspect of operating a small business.

“It was a little difficult at first because I had no real business experience,” Nancy said. “But I learned pretty quickly how to navigate the business world.”

Those years taught her lessons that couldn’t be learned in a classroom — how to serve customers, balance budgets, solve problems and build relationships. More importantly, they planted the seed that one day she wanted to own a business of her own.

She and Francisco often talked about creating something together, but they weren’t sure what that would look like.“I told him we should open up a side hustle business,” she said. “He said ‘what about a food truck?’ That was all the discussion we needed. We just went for it.”

A HUMBLE BEGINNING

Unlike many successful restaurant stories, El Zócalo didn’t begin with investors, bank loans or an elaborate business plan. The Lopez family started with savings, determination and a toy hauler converted into a makeshift kitchen.

“We didn’t have a lot of money to invest,” Nancy said. “But we had some good savings, and we thought, ‘Why don’t we try it? If it doesn’t work out, then it doesn’t work out. If it does, then great.’”

They opened El Zócalo food truck in 2022, serving customers primarily on weekends because they were both still working full time.

At first, the truck was parked on Topeka’s east side, where several Mexican restaurants and food trucks already operated. Business was encouraging during the opening weeks, but traffic eventually slowed. Instead of accepting defeat, Nancy saw an opportunity.

“I realized that we didn’t own a restaurant, we owned a food truck,” she said. “That meant we could move around and go where the opportunity took us.”

Recognizing a potential untapped market for their style of Mexican food, they set up the truck on the west side of Topeka, accepting invitations to festivals and community events and parking anywhere they could legally obtain permission.

The Lopez family says customers thanked them for bringing authentic Mexican food to neighborhoods where food trucks rarely ventured. Soon, El Zócalo became a familiar face across the city.

FINDING THEIR SIGNATURE DISH

The family also knew they needed something that would distinguish them from dozens of other Mexican restaurants. Instead of offering an extensive menu, they decided to focus almost entirely on a signature dish: birria, a slow-cooked Mexican beef dish that had not yet become widely available in Topeka.

The recipe Nancy used wasn’t passed down through generations or inherited from a distant relative. Instead, she watched cooking videos, researched recipes, experimented with different combinations of herbs and dried chiles and carefully documented every adjustment in a notebook until she developed the flavor she wanted.

“It took so many different tries until I got to the recipe that I really liked,” she said. “I’m very proud of it and excited that I get to pass it down to my daughter.”

Today, that recipe forms the basis for nearly every menu item the food truck serves.The beef and Nancy’s signature ingredients simmer for four to five hours before becoming the filling for tacos, quesabirria, ramen and egg rolls. The rich broth produced during cooking is served alongside tacos for dipping or used as the base for ramen, creating the deep flavor that has become synonymous with El Zócalo.

A LEAP OF FAITH

As word of their food spread, business changed almost overnight. Weekend service turned into requests for weddings, office lunches, school events and private catering. The phone rang constantly.

Soon, a difficult decision became unavoidable. One of them would have to leave a steady paycheck. Francisco went first. He left his full-time job to focus entirely on El Zócalo, taking on the hours-long process of cooking the meat.

Not long afterward, Nancy reduced her hours at her father’s business before eventually stepping back even further to help run the food truck full time.

“It was a leap of faith,” Nancy said. “We looked at the numbers and thought, we could actually pay our bills with this business. We said a prayer and trusted that God would guide us.”

Success brought an entirely new set of challenges. As word of El Zócalo spread throughout northeast Kansas, the Lopez family found themselves saying “no” more often than they wanted. Wedding receptions, community festivals, school functions and corporate lunches frequently landed on the same day, forcing them to turn away business because one food truck simply couldn’t be in two places at once.

That was when their daughter, Destiny Lopez, came up with a solution.

“We were getting double gigs,” Destiny said. “It was impossible to go to both events when we only had one food truck. It was simple, we needed to add another truck.”

The timing, however, wasn’t ideal. Destiny had just begun attending the University of Kansas, and paying for college remained the family’s highest priority.

“My family always put my education first,” Destiny said. “So, we needed a solution that would help with the food truck being double booked and also help pay my tuition.”

DESTINY’S TURN

Living in Lawrence while attending KU, Destiny realized there was room for El Zócalo to build a following in another community. She also realized that, coming from a long line of entrepreneurs, she could make an investment and join the family business.

“I didn’t really have much money to offer at the time,” she said. “But I did have a car.”

She sold it and used the proceeds to help purchase the second food truck.

“It was kind of scary,” Destiny said. “I was thinking, ‘How am I going to get to school now?’ But I knew it was something I wanted to do.”

Today, the Lawrence truck operates at community events and regularly parks along Iowa Street, introducing El Zócalo to an entirely new customer base.

For many college students, balancing coursework with a part-time job is challenging enough. Destiny is balancing college while running her own business. She has learned nearly every part of the operation, from hauling the trailer to preparing menu items, stocking inventory and serving customers.

“I do a little bit of everything except cook the meat,” she said with a laugh. “That’s my dad’s role.”

THE HOURS BEFORE SUNRISE

Customers see only a small part of what it takes to operate a successful food truck.

What they don’t see begins long before sunrise. Francisco starts cooking the family’s signature birria before dawn because the meat requires four to five hours to become tender enough to serve. While it simmers, the rest of the family prepares cilantro, onions, salsa, fresh ingredients and supplies before loading everything into the trucks.

On busy weeks, the family prepares more than 800 pounds of meat between both food trucks. That workload requires additional help. El Zócalo now employs five part-time team members who spend their time preparing ingredients, stocking trucks and helping serve customers during busy events.

Even with additional employees, the family often works well beyond a traditional 40-hour week.“I heard this quote where they say when you start your own business you leave your full-time job to work more than a full-time job,” Destiny said.

For the Lopez family, though, El Zócalo is more than a business. It is a way to give back to the community that they love.

“A customer is more than a customer,” Nancy said. “People connect over food, and we are building relationships that go beyond the food truck. It brings a smile to my face when I can be part of something that brings community together.”

Nancy had a lot to smile about this summer when she helped bring more than 6,000 people together at Evergy Plaza for three FIFA World Cup watch parties for the Mexican national soccer team. The events included numerous local food and drink vendors as well as performances by Mexican musicians and dancers.

“It was really beautiful how the community came together. We had people from all over, many of them soccer fans of course, but so many people were there to just celebrate our community,” Nancy said.

With business thriving, surrounded by friends and family in a community she loves, Nancy says she is living the American Dream and wants to encourage others to live by her favorite quotation from Matthew 19:26: “But with God all things are possible.”