For Loren Johnson, the upheaval of COVID has been a time of new beginnings. With more than a decade working in restaurants on her resume, she had been considering starting her own food venture for a while, but when she was offered a pop-up at Avedano’s Meats in San Francisco last year, her dream was suddenly kickstarted into a reality.
“The person that owned the butcher shop there was looking for somebody to do a pop-up in the morning during the pandemic,” says Johnson. “I had been thinking about doing breakfast tacos, and once the opportunity arose, I was like, ‘This is a great time to move forward with this.’” Offering a rotating menu of sustainably sourced meat and veggie breakfast tacos, LoJo’s Tacos was born.
Now, through a collaboration between Mandela Partners and CUESA, new Bay Area businesses like LoJo’s Tacos are getting a chance to expand their businesses and reach new audiences at farmers markets in San Francisco.