Rebecca Gonzalez started with one restaurant.
She now has six with two more in the works.
1928 Cuban Bistro is built around her mother’s recipes from Cuba and her own belief that employees should be treated like family.
“We just treat everybody like family and they know it,” she said. “We have a lot of long-tenured staff. I have people who are still with me. And that’s pretty incredible for a restaurant.”
Gonzalez, 41, launched her first restaurant at age 24 as a franchisee for a Giardino Gourmet Salads location in her native Miami.
She sold the business in 2015 after almost eight years of operation.
Gonzalez does her homework before any decision.
She and her husband, Adrian, saw a need for home health care in Jacksonville and came to the area in 2015 to start the Always Caring Home Health agency.
“I helped him launch that, and then after doing that for about a year, I was like this isn’t me. I’m not an office person. I need to be around people and kind of doing what I love and this is what I love,” Gonzalez said.
During that time, she saw that the area did not have many restaurants offering Cuban cuisine.
In 2019 she opened the first 1928 Cuban Bistro, choosing a site on Baymeadows Road near San Jose Boulevard.
She now has six restaurants in Duval, Clay, St. Johns and Nassau counties comprising locations in Baymeadows, Jacksonville Beach, Ortega, Saint Johns, Fernandina Beach and Fleming Island.
She is adding a location on Emerson Street near Philips Highway that also will serve as her catering kitchen, and in Riverside, which will be her eighth restaurant.
Gonzalez said her customers come for the experience as much as the food.
“We have a lot of regulars that come in daily and in every location, not just in one specific location,” she said.
“I think that the community really loves that, that feel of family.”
1928 Cuban Bistro is mostly a daytime business. Despite customers’ requests to stay open later, she purposely closes about 4 p.m. Sundays and Mondays and is not open past 8 p.m. the remainder of the week.
“We are able to give our staff and ourselves a good work-life balance. You know, Sundays, we close at four. Even though I know I could easily stay open till six, eight o’clock at night, I choose to close every location at four because that gives them time to go to that family barbecue at night or go to the movies or whatever they want to do.”
Expansion has worked because Gonzalez said she has learned to delegate and she promotes from within.
Grooming ambitious workers for management positions provides trust and allows her to take more of a background role in the day-to-day operations.
However, when there’s a family emergency or illness, she will step in and work in the kitchen preparing food, like in the old days.
“We have that open communication. We understand the family life,” Gonzalez said.
She said her managers keep an eye on the numbers.
“That’s really what helps the business sustain itself right now, especially with food costs being so high, payroll being so high. So really working on budgets weekly is very important for a business to succeed.”
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