Help Masa Taqueria stay open through the summer!

what's good to all my masa fans out there?!

We started this business with next to nothing. Masa was born out of my apartment in the height of the pandemic after losing my job at Mills Tavern and eventually getting booted of off unemployment in the midst of a hospitality industry job crisis. Not wanting to accept defeat and switch careers from the industry ive spent my entire adult life in, I decided to start slinging the food i know best. Tacos. Latin Street Foods. Traditional mexican items. The food i grew up eating for staff meal with all of the amazing immigrant workers i met over the years working in restaurant kitchens. Eventually, our landlords discovered what we were doing and terminated our lease, kicked us out and left us scrambling to find a new apartment or risk becoming homeless. Having started a new business and not having paystubs for almost 6 months, next to no one would approve us for a new apartment with the state of the RI housing crisis reaching an all time high, even as I type this out. Thats where Chi Kitchen, Ming's Asian Street Food and the Lorraine Mills came into play!

We found not only a home for Masa at the mills thanks to Ming's putting in the word to Chi Kitchen, but now we live right above our businesses home base in the Mills and have come to love and admire the community of businesses and artists here that we share the mills with.

So that brings us to the issue at hand:

Imma keep it 100 with ya'll. We've had an amazing first year in business by all accounts, but that doesnt mean this year has been without hardship! We're working as fast as we can to get our food truck on the road and at the same time keep operating our dine-in location at Rock & Rye Bar on atwells ave in PVD! But this takes lots of time, energy and money to acheive.

As anyone who starts a new business knows, getting small business funding is near impossible without business tax returns for at least two years prior. Our CPA is working to obtain some SBA funding to further expand Masa into a future storefront, expand our catering services and pimp out our food truck like Xzibit at West Coast Customs! We've already received our Graphic Design for the truck from our extremely talented homie, Peter Fortin (look him up! Homie does amazing photography, design and more!)

I work every single day doing a majority of the prep for Masa so that my Taqueros can walk in and work an easy shift slingin' tacos to ya'll. Myself and my wonderful partner in Masa, and life, Noor have sunk every last dollar that we can into this business. We've borrowed money via personal loans, a small private loan from our families and exhausted our personal credit lines almost to the brink. We've purchased just about every piece of equipment that we own secondhand. We've refurbished and cleaned old used pots, pans etc. Point being, We've made the best of any shitty situation thrown our way!

I'm not one to ask for handouts but part of growing up and becoming not only a better person, but also employer, business owner, etc is admitting when you need help and reaching out before things hit crisis mode.

That being said:

We are currently trying to raise $15,000 for Masa to help with 3 main goals

1) Due to a previous business partnership gone sour and negligence on our part after we parted ways, we have an outstanding tax debt of about $5,000.

If this tax debt isn't paid in full, or a large chunk put toward a payment plan before June 30th, 2022 we run the risk of not having our Sales Permit renewed and not being able to open until that permit has been renewed!

2) We have been quoted on the vinyl wrap for our food truck in the range of $3500-$5000. This is the last step of the process to get our truck fully operational and on the road to serve you guys! We would be using a portion of the money raised to go towards this cost!

3) We have amazing employees who we dont want to risk losing or cutting their hours and as such any remaining funds from this fundraiser will go towards keeping them on staff and providing the funds to keep them working their current shifts and more! Without these guys on our staff we'd be absolutely screwed and Masa would not be what it is without our amazing staff!!

So, in summary, we're working our hardest every single day to bring ya'll some of the best food in the state and we plan on doing that for years to come! We're hoping with your help that we can get over this little speed bump in our journey and continue on to bigger and better things!

Huge thanks to everyone who's supported us so far and helped us get to where we are! We love every single one of ya'll and your undying support has helped us get to this stage in the game and we even won a Best of RI award from RI Monthly this year! Here's to more awards, more tacos, a baller food truck and disrespectfully bussin' birria!!!!!