Five questions with Sarah & Otis Frizzell

In the olden days, pre-2014, small businesses had to go cap in hand to the bank for capital.

Now crowdfunding sites are offering alternative avenues through reward and equity campaigns.

Local sites have hogged the headlines recently, but Lucky Taco founders Sarah & Otis Frizzell went old-school. The pair have just raised $100,000 through a rewards campaign on Kickstarter, the US-based site that kicked off the crowdfunding craze.

Their successful raise was something of a comeback for Mexican contenders after a Mad Mex equity campaign ($750,000 for 7% of its shares) fell short over on Snowball.

The social media-savvy Sarah and Otis currently have a food truck on Auckland's Ponsonby Rd. What's next? NBR asked them five questions.

Why did you choose Kickstarter?
We chose Kickstarter because it’s a globally-recognised platform. We have international supporters, so we wanted everyone to get on board. Plus, our future plans include expansion overseas.

What's the plan from here? 
The plan from here is to get busy. We have about 4000 kits to produce and package up for our backers. Delivery date is December, so our supporters will have their kits for Christmas. We'll also be making our Mexican pickles and selling those from the Lucky Taco truck and participating retailers.

We have a great relationship with Farro Fresh & Moore Wilsons. They already stock our range of Lucky Taco hot sauce and have shown us great support, so we hope to range future products in these stores. We also hope to stock our range at Nosh. Our distribution partners, Topline Marketing, assist us on a larger scale, supplying our hot sauce and Chilli Salt into more than 50 Foodstuffs stores nationwide. We intend to focus on our independents and key New World stores to test the market.

Our website needs a complete overhaul now that we’ve grown up a bit. Once complete, we’ll look to sell some of our products online — but online sales are in the hard-basket for the taco kits. They need to be kept refrigerated as all the ingredients are fresh. So you can expect to see them in the chilled section, next to the fresh eggs, pasta and pizza bases.

Do you plan to sell into Australia, or beyond?
Once we have systems and cycles in place here in NZ, we will look to sell into Australia, then the UK, then the USA, then parts of Asia.

Mexicali Fresh, Mexico, Mad Mex, Lucky Taco — has Ponsonby Road reached peak Mexican?
Ponsonby Road is host to a variety of different interpretations of what Mexican food is. New Zealand is still on a learning curve. Most of the ‘Mexican’ food on Ponsonby Road is actually tex mex or a Californian version of Mexican food, which is cool, but we’re definitely the only ones representing the most authentic version of Mexican cuisine. 

So you get high on your own supply? What's your favourite menu item?
We love the Lucky Lengua & Spicy Fish