HOSPITALITY
On its first outings, the bustaurant moved around to different locations, with customers keeping up on social media, but Catalina wanted to find a permanent pitch for La Latina to call home"
somewhere, but one of the fridges broke, so we had to use that money – these kind of things happen. But we like to live frugal lives: we try to be happy with what we’ve got, and enjoy what we have.” La Latina is a family business in all senses of the term: whether it’s Catalina’s mother providing business advice via Skype, Nelson’s cousin designing La Latina’s exterior paintwork or his parents helping upholster the bus in coffee sacks, family is what powers the bus forward – both in terms of physical backup, but also emotional support. In its first year of trading, La Latina suffered from two burglaries which, though the couple philosophically say they learned a great deal of lessons from the experience, was extremely hard. But it was family that pulled them through. “I remember one day when I was so, so tired – around the time of the break-ins. I was just so down,” Catalina said. “I remember coming back home, and talking with my daughter who was six at the time. I said: ‘You know what? I’m thinking about selling the bus.’ She was like: ‘You can’t DO THAT!’” Catalina puts her hands on her hips and widens her eyes in mock child outrage, smiling from ear to ear: “‘I LOVE our bus! Where am I going to work?’ And I thought – she’s already seeing a future: she’s seeing
herself working in La Latina. That was a lot to me: that pushed me to keep going. “We try to keep that balance: family first, but also keeping the business up and running. Being an entrepreneurial couple and having a business together is obviously testing us in all ways possible, but I say to him: ‘Probably, I will get old with you: we survived kids, we survived the business, so we are child-proof and business-proof – we’re a good pair!” Even a short visit to La Latina at lunch – surrounded by families, office workers, shoppers seeking respite, all tucking into the three delicious dishes served by this hard-working couple – would leave you in no doubt it’s already a much-loved eatery, but Catalina’s dream is to have a ‘proper’ restaurant one day: a bricks-and- mortar establishment where they can expand their offering. “Fingers crossed,” she says. “Though I would like to take the bus with me: it’s like another baby! We need the perfect location where I can have the bus and a proper restaurant, too. I’m always on the lookout. Kids love coming to the bus, having a meal here: it’s the whole experience, not just the food. So I don’t want to leave it! We are Latin: I want to have a restaurant where people can have food, nice cocktails, and maybe they can dance with live music,” she grins. “That’s the plan.”
it’s free!” she laughs. At the moment, Catalina and Nelson are hesitant to follow the trend for signing up with delivery services like Deliveroo. “They really want us to join, but they take such a large chunk of the money,” Catalina explains. Instead, the couple find that younger fans of the bustaurant simply call, or place orders through La Latina’s social media presences and pick the orders up themselves – enjoying the personal touch and experiential nature of visiting the bus to collect food or eat in. Like most self-employed people, Catalina occasionally finds the unpredictable nature of being one’s own boss a little challenging. “Sometimes I say to Nelson that I miss the stability of having a proper job, being an employee,” she says. “You get paid, you get told what to do, on the first day of the month the money goes into your account. We were planning to take the kids
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ISSUE 03
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