Today we’d like to introduce you to Maria Raudales
Hi Maria, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was working as a babysitter for an American family before i got into the party business one day I visited a friend and she had a bounce house that she was trying to sell and I asked her how much she would sell it to me and she told me $500 so I kept working and realized that I could buy it so i spoke to her on reserving the bounce house for me because I wanted it and the next day I went for it. Later on I began to buy foldable chairs and tables. when i began to notice my business started to grow I began promoting myself on Facebook and they started contacting me and I did that on the weekends with my oldest son Bryan Aviles, my only daughter Michelle Terrazas and my son Michael Terrazas in 2012 they were the ones who helped me and during the weekendsI took care of those two girls for 5 years and with the money that I earned taking care of these girls I bought more bounce houses, tables and chairs, little by little .Then I decided to dip into the decorative side of parties so I purchased tablecloths, tents and center pieces . Until one day a client told me ‘’do you make tacos ?‘’I told her no and I told her for how many people do you need and she told me for 30 people and I said I could make them for her. so i did some research and headed to academy and bought a grill . I started looking on Facebook to see what was needed to do a taco catering business and I bought everything I needed in 2016 . At first I didn’t have many clients but little by little I got more clients because it was a word by mouth marketing before we went to social media and business cards and now I do more taco catering or any other type of food for parties. My children were my inspiration and my greatest support that I had. Without them I would not have been able to have a business and stand where i do today. I’m sure it must have been difficult for them but thanks to them we were able to push my business to where it is today
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
yes it was a difficult road for ome since i was a stay at home mom who’s only income was from babysitting so i didn’t have much money i only had my kids support not even my own husband supported me he was one of my biggest obsticles. it put a strain in my relationship with him for a while but eventually he gave in and we are doing fine now
As you know, we’re big fans of Taquizas KD. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
my business began as a simple bouncy house rentals which later on branched out to other party categories
catering- we mostly focus on tacos but have been asked by clients to do other food groups like italian pasta or burritos, tortas, burgers, hotdogs, and more
table/chair covers ( decoration)- at a certain point clients would ask if we knew someone who could decorate so we did researched and practiced how to use the decorations and would tlel them that we knew how to and eventually I took some classes to help me further my decorating skills
ballon(and flower) decorations- it wasn’t enough for us to just know how to decorate using table cloths with bows and different colors and designs but balloons were pretty popular when we first started so we added that to the party arsenal and kept improving those skills in a timely manner to where it would take us all day to do one single balloon arc to doing up to 2-3 decorations within 2 hours each
bouncy houses( moonwalks)- we not only did regular boucy houses with different themes/colors but we even bought some water bouncy houses with the pool in the end and the hose to rain water on the slides for the summer since that was a popular party time where all students would be in summer break and other events would occur
i believe one thing that seperates us from other self made businesses is that we are a nit family made business where we started this business with the blood sweat and tears of two different generations with the first being me the mexican generation and the second my kids being the mexican american generation i came here to give my kids a better life and i ended up teaching them family values, the meaning of hard work and how much value hard earned money is worth. so no matter what my kids end up doing in life i know they can take care of themselves and they have skills that can help them earn money in different fields even as a hobbie or side job
i am most proud of the rebranding i did for my business originally it was known as tacos mariquitas due to the meaning of a nickname for me. But i didn’t just want it to be about that nickname but rather where i came from so i rebranded to taquizas KD meaning tacos from cadereyta the place i was raised in
we would love for your readers to know that with our party brand we will not do you wrong that you can trust us with keeping your party going that people will talk about your event weeks after hosting it because of how memorable our home cooked food is we have our clients in mind when preparing for your event we just hope everyone is satisfied with our services and keep the word by mouth marketing for us to recomend us to a friend of a friend in which we are located in Houston, Texas .
What do you like and dislike about the city?
we love how close some stores and convenient stores are to the homes of our clients when it comes to purchasing emergency items if we ran out of plates or anything of that sort to keep the party going to put our clients minds at ease to just focus on having fun
we dislike certain iareas due to the heavy trafific causing some delay to our route to our business destination which can be bad for our image of arriving 1 hour ealry to set everything up and begin at the designated time requested by the client(s)
Pricing:
- 50 people( our smallest package) -$700 for catering
- 100 people- $1,300 catering
- tables- $7 each chairs -$1 each
- table clothes- $10 each chair covers and bows -$1.75 a pair
- decorations- price varies depending on size and materials
Contact Info:
