Some convenience retailers come up in the business—others are drawn to it seemingly out of the blue. Such was the case for K.C. Ueberroth, owner of Yo!Boca!Taco! with locations in Wayland and Sturbridge, Massachusetts.
The now-owner had worked in a family hotel business for 15 years when he decided to relocate across the country from the West Coast.
“I saw a picture of the gas station and was drawn to it. I didn’t even know where the town it was located in was,” said Ueberroth. “I had no experience in the business when I got into it, but I thought I could use my marketing skills.”
When he took over the business, he discovered that “there were many more complications” than he expected. “People felt like it was just a gas station. The c-store was stripped down, and so I wanted to make the c-store more relevant,” he said. He changed everything in the station and started selling tacos out of an unused section of the store. Yo!Boca!Taco! opened in May 2022.
Word of Mouth
The rent for the building was going up, and Ueberroth had extra interior space that wasn’t being used. When a friend suggested putting a taco truck outside, he did some research. “Personally, I love tacos. But it was complicated to do—there were limitations on food trucks within the city,” he recalled.
Instead, he studied the Dunkin’ model. “They owned the area. My biggest competitor had a Dunkin’. I thought, ‘how could I do this inside the store, but with tacos?’”
The thought ignited his taco quest. “I tried every taco place in Boston. I found the best one and asked if they would mentor me,” he said. That shop—in his opinion—was Taqueria El Amigo, whose cooks from Tijuana, Mexico, taught him what sauces were popular and how to set up a kitchen.
“I had $50,000 total to spend total, so I had to get creative to set the kitchen up,” he said.
With some more advice from Carlos Magalhaes, the founder of Fuel America Coffee, under his belt, he started serving the original Yo!Boca!Taco!
“We kept it simple—a Mexican style street taco. Then, we ended up working with a vendor from Mexico and decided to introduce burritos,” he said. “We also do a breakfast taco that is popular. No one else does a breakfast taco around here.”
People are blown away by the tacos that pop with flavor, Ueberroth said. “Our tacos are moist and juicy. People want to buy the meat.”
The key to the success of the food is the quality of the ingredients, he added.
“We use an award-winning tortilla company. We use made-from-scratch black and pinto beans as well as homemade rice,” he said. “It’s kind of like a band. You put a world class drummer next to a world class bassist and they are going to play well together. It’s why we end up voted as the best burrito in the state. I’m not a chef, but the one thing I’m good at is the details and I pay attention to what works.”
Soon, word began to spread about the store’s tacos and a viral TikTok video put Yo!Boca!Taco! on the map.
“A guy named Matt Shearer from WBZ radio reached out to me. He has a big following and we got one million views from his video,” Ueberroth said. “Then we got really packed. People made trips out to see us and we were doing double the sales.”
That lead to other media, including a feature in the Boston Globe. “We kind of became media darlings. I was a marketing guy, but did no marketing,” he said.
For more on Yo!Boca!Taco!, check out the September 2024 issue of NACS Magazine.