Local Mexican, Brazilian restaurant fighting to make it to 10 years and beyond
In August, Sid and Nora Getz will mark nine years running La Tiendita, the colorful North Monroe Street restaurant where they’ve spent nearly a decade bringing the flavors of Mexico and Brazil to Tallahassee. But this year, the anniversary carries a different weight than the ones before it.
“Please help us get to the 10th anniversary and beyond,” Sid said.
It’s not the kind of thing a restaurant owner says lightly, and for Sid and Nora, it’s the culmination of a fight that’s been building and came to a head over the past year.
Restaurant dilemmas
The restaurant never fully recovered from the pandemic, he said, and the gap between what it costs to run the place and what it brings in has only widened since. Sid had turned to merchant cash advances, a form of financing where a lender is paid back by taking a cut of future sales, often on a weekly basis. The interest, Sid said, was outrageous, and the loans didn’t solve the problem so much as prolong it.
We know a lot of restaurants are hurting. So many have closed. We generally don’t know of their troubles until it’s too late. It’s unusual for the owners to provide such an earnest, honest look at their efforts to survive and thrive – but that’s exactly what Sid and Nora are doing.
Sid and Nora have decided to offer tacos de Birria as a regular menu item because they were overwhelmed with orders when it was offered only occasionally. Photo / Tallahassee Table
A meal worth the effort
My husband and I dined at La Tiendita on Saturday night, and our meals were delicious. We started with chips and Nora’s vibrant homemade salsa. I savored one of the restaurant’s specialties, the birria taco, while my husband devoured the chile relleno.
Our server that night was Dylan, the teenage son of Nora and Sid, helping out on weekends. He was friendly and quick — a reminder that even the cost of paying servers is one more expense weighing on the family’s bottom line.
The ask
In a recent Facebook post, La Tiendita asked the community for help — and to become stakeholders in its future:
“Every minute counts,” the post read. “For 9 years, La Tiendita has been part of this community’s story — birthdays, first dates, Sunday dinners, late nights with friends. Today, we’re asking you to be part of ours.”
The Getzes say they’ve created a plan to cross what they’re calling a bridge to their 10th year, but they can’t do it alone.
Asking the community for help
Rather than turn to a crowdfunding platform, Sid and Nora decided to ask their customers directly. Sid said he’d looked into GoFundMe and didn’t love what he found – campaigns succeed at low rates industry-wide, and restaurants in particular haven’t fared especially well on the platform.
Instead, the Getzes built their ask around things they could actually offer back: a restaurant gift card program with bonus incentives (donate $100, get a $120 gift card, for example), La Tiendita T-shirts, a dinner cooked and hosted by Nora, and the chance to buy a seat at the bar with a name plaque mounted on the back of the barstool are among other incentives.
La Tiendita is also packaging Nora’s Salsa de Comal for sale in 16-ounce plastic containers (the kind of container you’d get for soup from a Chinese restaurant).
The side bar at La Tiendita. Photo / Tallahassee Table
Some, they say, will simply want to donate — and that’s welcome too. The site is: [https://donate.latienditatally.com.
Sid, who has an undergraduate degree in business administration and has been an owner and chef in restaurants in Atlanta and New York before settling in Tallahassee, points to how much has shifted underneath restaurants like his since the pandemic: minimum wage has climbed sharply in Florida over the past several years, and labor costs for a full staff have roughly doubled without revenue doubling to match.
Nora and Sid have adjusted by staggering shifts so employees can help cover each other during the busiest hours. They scaled back their schedule, closing on Mondays and opening at 11 a.m. the rest of the week.
Restaurant owners will tell you that food and supply costs have climbed right alongside labor.
Nora and Sid Getz in the dining room of La Tiendita. Photo / Tallahassee Table
A bit of background
Nora was born in Mexico City. Sid is a native of São Paulo, Brazil and spent some time in Colombia and Venezuela. The couple moved to Tallahassee from Brooklyn in 2013. Their son Dylan was only 2 when they left the city where they owned two jewelry/fashion stores and a printing company.
They have been at the helm of La Tiendita on North Monroe Street since 2017, and they transformed a Mexican market — La Tiendita means “small store” — into a homey, authentic destination for Latin and Portuguese cuisine. They also added a side room with a full bar and a big TV.
Chicken enchiladas is a hit on the extensive La Tiendita menu. Photo / Tallahassee Table
This is a restaurant with authentic fare. Nora makes her own mole poblano from scratch, a dish that harkens back to her home. “My mother taught me how to make it,” she said in an earlier Tallahassee Table interview.
Another specialty here is the tacos de birria, made with a savory, slow-cooked stew that’s often a star of special occasions in Mexico.
The menu is extensive with classics such as burritos, fajitas, tacos and enchiladas along with many starters and sides. Specialties include Milanesa de Res (breaded steak) and carne asada (grilled meat) along with Portuguese dishes.
Why they keep going
Sid doesn’t sugarcoat what it takes to run a restaurant in this economy: the stress, the sleepless nights, the physical toll of years on your feet. Sometimes he wonders why anyone opens a restaurant these days at all.
Still, La Tiendita has never just been a business for the Getz family — it’s the place where their son grew up doing homework between tables, and where, as Nora once put it, “everything that’s here means something.” Now they’re asking the Tallahassee community that’s supported them for nine years to help carry them make it to the next, to think of themselves, as Sid put it, not just as customers but as stakeholders in whether La Tiendita makes it to 10 years and beyond.
La Tiendita is at 1840 N. Monroe St.; 850-523-1494 or latienditatally.com. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday to Sunday.
