A week ago, Teodoro Jimenez would bring in about $400 on a good day selling tacos from his pop-up tent on South 43rd Street in San Diego's Shelltown neighborhood near National City. That changed after his business, Blue Fire Bliss, went viral on TikTok this week, and now he's busier than ever.
There's no shortage of places to get tacos and carne asada fries in San Diego, but many people came to this one because of a TikTok made by Jesús Morales, a social media influencer who lives in the neighborhood.
In the TikTok, Morales offers to pay for any tacos Jimenez sells within the hour — which amounted to about $600 worth of food. He then offers a $1,000 cash tip and Jimenez is stunned. Then, Jimenez starts to cry as he explains how this money will help him reach his goal of buying a food truck.
Morales, who is known as "juixxe" online, uses his social media platform to help Southern California street vendors. In previous interviews, Morales said that as a child of Mexican immigrants, he wants to give back to street vendors — many of whom are immigrants.
His videos have featured people selling elote, grilled Mexican street corn, at a foldable table, a man selling produce from the trunk of his car and folks selling paletas from a pushcart. They all have a common thread of Morales giving large cash tips and bringing attention to these street entrepreneurs.
Morales started giving away money during the pandemic and has said he raises funds from his 3.6 million TikTok followers to support street vendors. He's also done these giveaways through sponsorship with big brands like Cricket Wireless.
It's not abnormal for his TikToks to get millions of views, but something about Jimenez struck a chord with online viewers.
Within 24 hours, the TikTok of Blue Fire Bliss had millions of views. By Friday it was just shy of 6 million views. Morales also started a GoFundMe to help Jimenez raise money for a food truck.
"I started this gofundme to help Teodoro (taco stand vendor) make his dream come true of having a food truck!" he wrote on the GoFundMe page. "Food trucks are rather expensive so I've set the goal to $50,000 but hopefully we can raise more for his truck."
The 49-year-old entrepreneur's taco stand is in the parking lot of a liquor store on the corner of North Highland Avenue and Epsilon Street. Sales have quadrupled and the other night they brought in a little over $1,400 in sales.
When the stand opened on Thursday evening, customers never stopped coming and two hours later the grill hissed with smoke as more and more people pulled up.
With all of the recent buzz, you wouldn't guess that Blue Fire Bliss has been open for less than a year because Jimenez and his family run the stand in a kind of organized chaos. Jimenez's son takes cash and writes orders on a yellow legal pad, his youngest daughter and a family friend package the food for customers all while he handles the grill. Jimenez's wife preps the food so he doesn't miss a beat.
"It definitely lives up to the hype," said Chula Vista resident Eddie Mendoza who heard about the stand from TikTok. "You get hot dogs, hamburgers, tacos, quesadillas, carne asada fries — I mean, it's like a regular taco shop. But it's in the street, which is even more amazing."
And despite the stand being open seven days a week from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., this isn't Jimenez's full-time job. (Blue Fire Bliss used to be closed on Wednesdays but they added that day to keep up with demand.)
Jimenez's day starts at 6 a.m. and he works as a cook at The Kabob Shop in Little Italy. As a kid, his family struggled financially and he worked alongside his father as an agriculture worker in Nayarit, Mexico. When he was a teen, they immigrated to San Diego and since then, he's worked in a variety of kitchens for 28 years.
The pandemic impacted his hours working in restaurants so he started making food at home and selling it to his neighbors to make extra money for his family.
Jimenez said that while he doesn't have the economic resources or money to fully achieve his dream of owning a food business just yet, opening a taco stand is a start.
"My dream is a cart like the one I put there in front of the store, then move on to a food truck and then, as a possibility, to open a location, a restaurant," he said in Spanish.
His son, Josh Jimenez — who is 18 and the second youngest of Teodoro Jimenez's six children — acts as a spokesperson and helps his dad run the business. From his research, Josh said a truck can cost $100,000 — and that's on the low end. The added startup costs and licensing can cost about $300,000.
"Local communities can help their street vendors ... by just giving us a try," Josh Jimenez said. "That itself makes us as street vendors incredibly happy just to be able to serve customers and having them try our food and (the possibility of having) another chance in the future to serve them again."
