02-05-2025
I left the U.S. for India to open a burrito restaurant—it brought in $23M last year: Here's the biggest mistake I made along the way
For the opening of its 100th location, the Bangalore-based burrito chain restaurant California Burrito priced everything on their menu at 100 rupees.
The deal went viral, says founder Bert Mueller.
"We wound up with these incredible lines out of the stores because too many people had showed up," Mueller says.
Mueller started California Burrito in 2012 when he was just 22-years-old. The idea came to him when he was studying abroad in India for a semester during college. One of his classmates of Mexican origin brought her host family Mexican food and they absolutely loved it.
"Something clicked in my head that maybe this was something I could do — I could bring Mexican-inspired cuisine to India," he says.
Today California Burrito has more than 100 locations and last year it brought in $23 million in revenue. But Mueller admits that he made some missteps along the way.
One of them, he says, was not spending any money on marketing. Events like the 100th-location celebration just weren't a priority to Mueller during the early days of California Burrito.
"Marketing was something we totally underinvested in and really didn't start spending on until Covid," Mueller says.
Mueller and his businesses partners, two childhood friends who have since left the company and returned to the U.S., picked Bangalore, the fourth-largest city in the country, for the restaurant's first location. It being an IT hub meant that many residents had traveled to the United States and had likely tried Mexican or Mexican-adjacent food.
Mueller estimated it would cost $100,000 U.S. dollars to open his first store, so he raised $250,000 from friends and family "to be careful," he says.
The first location earned about $500,000 USD during the first year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. And that original $250,000 in funding ended up being enough for Mueller to open two more stores.
One of the reasons Mueller didn't spend on marketing initially was because he wasn't sure how or if it would effect the bottom line. Seeing how the pandemic decreased foot traffic, Mueller knew the store needed to invest in some sort of online presence. Today, he says, they spend about 4% of their budget on marketing.
During its 100th-location celebration, Mueller hired influencers to promote the deal. That day California Burrito earned eight times its normal business.
"I wish we had done this earlier — done marketing earlier," he says.
