After years of working for their father, Paulo and Nelson Benavides are taking the plunge as business owners.
The two bought the Don Pepe Mexican Restaurant at 9550 Midlothian Turnpike earlier this year; their father, Rafael, owned that location as well as two others: one on Hull Street Road in Midlothian and one on West Hundred Road in Chester.
“We moved here in 1995, and our dad had restaurants in Mexico before we moved,” Paulo said. “We thought this was the right time to be independent, and our dad thought overseeing three restaurants might be too many.”
The brothers are rebranding their restaurant as Pepe’s but otherwise don’t plan to make any major changes. They said the menu wouldn’t change much, though the brothers want to “put their own personal touch on it while still serving food people are comfortable eating.”
They’re also tapping into new technology, offering discounts to diners who “check-in” at the restaurant on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
And the place will still be very much a family business.
“The good thing about having family here is that you’re together all day, all week and all year,” Paulo said. “And it’s something that lets you go on vacation without worrying if someone is taking good care of the restaurant.”
The Benavides moved to Richmond in 1995, when Paulo was 10 and Nelson was 11. Since Rafael had built a successful restaurant business in Degollado, a town in Mexico’s Jalisco province, opening one here seemed like a natural fit.
“Since we’d been in the business back in Mexico, we could hit the ground running,” Paulo said.
Paulo, who’s 26, helped open the location two years ago and has run it since then. He said the decision to become the owner as well as operator during a tough economic time wasn’t too stressful.
“You’re always nervous when you open a new place, but we’ve had good successes and have a template for starting a restaurant,” he said. “The big difference here on Midlothian Turnpike is the amount of competition.”
And Paulo and Nelson, who’s 27, have learned at Rafael’s side for years.
“We’ve prepared the same way and learned what our dad wanted to learn at the same time,” Paulo said.
Now they hope those lessons will let them build on their success in Chesterfield and even expand to a second location.
“Our next goal is to have a place in the city” Paulo said. “Downtown is becoming a go-to place with a lot of good restaurants, so we’d like to be there too.”