Restaurant owner builds on success
Enrique Roman opened Mexico Tipico on Dixie Highway in 1993, and since then, he’s been scattering Mexican restaurants around Louisville like treats from a piñata.
With other eateries operating under the names El Nopal, El Nopalito, and Tequila, Roman and a combination of partners have nine family-style restaurants in the Louisville area and another in Corydon, Ind., all with the same menu.
A new edition of El Nopal is to open this fall in Sellersburg, Ind., and more Louisville outlets are being planned.
Roman has parlayed generous portions, moderate prices, and a guacamole with a reputation as hearty as the chunks of avocado it contains into a minor Tex-Mex food empire.
“I’m very comfortable right now,” he said, though he added, “I don’t have a lot of money in my pocket.”
He credits his success to good service, fresh food, and hard work. Loyal customers are willing to hunt down his restaurants even if they’re in such out-of-the-way locations as the El Nopal at 9473 Westport Road — around a corner near the loading docks behind the Westport Plaza shopping center.
“I do everything the best I can, and the people follow us,” he said.
Roman has a head for business and a careful approach, said Bill Buzan, his Realtor and business adviser.
“Rick is an astute businessman. He’s got it all,” said Buzan, of Century 21 Realty Group Hagan. “He’ll work hard, and he doesn’t step where he doesn’t know what he’s stepping into.”
Roman has put together his restaurants with minimal investments — on his own or in partnership with relatives or employees he has seen work hard over a number of years and knows he can trust.
Many are in areas where customers have asked him to locate, Roman said, and are often begun in abandoned restaurants, including a former Taco Bell.
“It’s cheaper to start a restaurant that way,” Roman said. “We don’t spend much money in opening,” and suppliers have been willing to advance him equipment on installment plans.
Roman and a crew of friends renovate the interiors into picturesque Mexican courtyards decorated with cactuses, Mexican-themed posters, and colorful sombreros on the walls.
“I could pay a company $50,000. It costs me $5,000 (to do it) myself,” he said.
Buzan, who scouts out new locations for Roman, said that restaurants don’t always fail because they’re in bad locations. A closed restaurant often comes equipped with necessities such as range hoods and sprinkler systems, so a business can be up and running with some work and just a month or two of rent.
Roman, 45, grew up in Apetlanca, Mexico, a town of about 2,500 in the mountains north of Acapulco, where the weather is milder than in the torrid plains below. “It’s a very beautiful, fresh small town,” he said. “I love it.”
About twice a year, Roman returns to Apetlanca to get the clatter and clash of the restaurants out of his head and work on the farm that supported his parents and their 10 children.
“When I go on the farm, I relax,” Roman said, and “the problems you have in the restaurant (business) I don’t have there.”
He got his working habits from his father, who was 70 years old when he died two years ago, Roman said. “He was a man that worked hard. He never stopped. He was a good example.”
Roman worked a few jobs in Apetlanca and studied business in college for about a year before he came to the United States in 1984, first to Chicago, thinking he’d work for six months and then return to school.
But he found he could earn in one day what it would take a month to make in Mexico, so he decided this country was the place to make his start.
Like some other newcomers to Chicago’s large Hispanic community, Roman got a restaurant job, washing dishes at a Marriott hotel. But he was “always seeing what they do” in the kitchen and eventually worked as a cook.
“I’m an excellent cook, I can say that.”
Roman married his wife, Ana, in Chicago. They have three children and live in the Lake Forest area of Louisville.
