More Than a Quesadilla With Rudy Jimenez

Everyone in the restaurant industry can testify to the power of a delicious meal after a long workday. For Senior Hospitality Specialist Rudy Jimenez, a hot quesadilla doesn’t only mark the difference between an average day and a day where he worked his ass off. Ever since his first restaurant job, a warm quesadilla will always remind Rudy of the Mexican restaurants run by dedicated people celebrating their culture beyond Mexico. Compared to certain restaurants that offer tacos and margaritas alongside other non-Mexican food items, authentic Mexican food is only possible thanks to the passion of each family member (or people close enough to be called cousin) mixing the pico de gallo to perfection and making tortillas from scratch.

Rudy credits his mother as the first person who proved there’s more to Mexican cuisine than free chips and salsa. After moving from Mexico to Washington state, she worked her way through the different local restaurants and noticed something different in how chefs prepared her native cuisine. A restaurant couldn’t just follow a recipe for roasting peppers at a certain temperature and slicing chicken at a specific angle. Guests needed to taste a sense of pride behind their meals, a feeling that someone made their food for family.

Thanks to her dedication to authenticity, his mother soon became a thriving force in the Valley, Washington’s local restaurant scene. Alongside her normal duties as a restaurant staff member, his mother could point out when a shrimp burrito felt too Americanized (it was all about the sauce) and why simplicity is the key to good guacamole, not more lime juice. The opening of new Mexican restaurants throughout the Valley became her crowning achievement Rudy’s mother treats all the new Mexican restaurants as her crowning achievement for the Valley community. Now more people could savor the magic of unforgettable dishes like delicious Jalisco-style birria and mole.

I tell the children of immigrant restaurant owners that I know exactly what they feel as they run their business. My mom and I have been in their situation too.

Meanwhile, when he was in high school, Rudy joined his mother and dipped his toe in the Valley’s restaurant scene as a dishwasher. “My mom always believed in putting me to work, where I could understand real effort,” says Rudy. She introduced him to Martin, the head chef of a local restaurant who recently had ten dishwashers quit this month. With his mother’s reputation on the line, Rudy took up the job. And on his first day, he spent seven hours washing dishes nonstop. 

Rudy soon discovered that a delicious meal in a restaurant wasn’t simply a mix of ingredients thrown onto a plate. A restaurant is built by a dedicated team hustling in front of the guests and behind the scenes in the kitchen. The chefs, servers, and even dishwashers like Rudy were all integral parts of creating an amazing food experience. He still feels nostalgic over all the little moments from his dishwasher job that impacted the restaurant each day. The struggle of scraping off cheddar cheese glued to a plate, the weight of tubs filled with silverware, all the smells sticking to his clothes post-shift.

That first summer job in a restaurant taught me grit, humility, and the importance of every role from the kitchen to the front door.

Now at SpotOn, Rudy’s still helping restaurants like Martin’s—but he’s no longer the dishwasher. He’s out in Washington, meeting with restaurant owners to help streamline their orders and boost menu profits through SpotOn tech. “I knew how family-owned restaurants valued upfront communication for costs and products,” says Rudy. “And SpotOn’s point-of-sale felt like it would be the perfect fit to leave an impact.”

His past restaurant work usually becomes an important point of connection between him and the other children of Mexican restaurant owners. Much like Rudy, the next generation all know how satisfying it feels to see a cleaned-out salsa bar or the hum of a filled dishwashing machine after a hard day at the restaurant. However, Rudy noticed a pattern in second-generation restaurant operators' approach to running an authentic Mexican restaurant.

There were certain gaps of knowledge, like taking inventory and tracking sales for a P&L statement, that the younger generations wanted to streamline for their restaurants even though they didn’t have the right tools to complement their operations. If it took too long for servers to take orders from each table, most next-gen restaurant owners didn’t know the magic of a handheld device and kitchen display system to improve workflows.

Rudy starts by looking at what makes their operations unique and authentic before teasing out the solutions. Does the restaurant know how to use their POS system reports to find their best-selling items? Can their kitchen balance in-person and online orders without feeling overwhelmed? “When I walk into a restaurant, I already know how to speak their language for efficiency, in both English and Spanish,” says Rudy. “Both the older and younger generations don’t want to be bogged down by fancy tech. They want easy connections that function without hiccups.”

While his mother and other family members still work with restaurants throughout Washington, Rudy’s honored to continue their legacy through SpotOn, helping a new batch of second-generation restaurant operators. He can still come home, feel the smells of the restaurant stained to his clothes, and hear the hum of the dishwashing machine ringing in his ears. And even though he still relishes a hot quesadilla as a special reward for a long work day, Rudy’s got a new way to celebrate. He recently became a father to a wonderful newborn who constantly reminds Rudy what his work with restaurants is all about—family.