Ambition drives CEO as Mexican restaurant group expands

The restaurant business has been a central part of Paul Arechiga’s life since he emigrated with his parents and siblings from Mexico to the United States at age 15.

Soon after he arrived in 2003, Arechiga went to work as a dishwasher at his uncle’s Mexican restaurant in Illinois. His responsibilities grew over time from a busser to an assistant manager.

Arechiga moved here in 2007 to be near his now-wife, Deborah. He is now CEO of Arechiga Restaurant Group, headquartered in Fishers. The company has nine Mexican restaurants in the Indianapolis area and five more in suburban Chicago. Arechiga, 35, employs about 400 people, many of whom are friends and family.

“Most of them, we’ve been working together since Day One,” he said. “We all say we are all growing together.”

He opened his first restaurant, Verde Flavors of Mexico, in 2009 in Fishers. He subsequently expanded the Verde brand to Carmel (2017), the Ironworks Hotel in Indianapolis (2019) and Zionsville (2022).

Salsa Verde Mexican Restaurant and Taqueria opened in 2015 on the west side of Indianapolis, and Los Agaves Grill followed in McCordsville (2017) and in Westfield (2020). Last year, Arechiga opened his first fast-casual restaurant, Quesa Tacos, in Carmel.

“Each location has their own thing,” Arechiga said. “Me and my family, we always said the next one has to be better than the prior we just built, and we try not to repeat things.”

This month, he opened his newest concept, Casa Santa, at Hamilton Town Center in Noblesville.

The 11,000-square-foot Casa Santa has seating for 400 and is about three times larger than any of Arechiga’s other restaurants. The building was formerly home to The Odyssey, an Asian-style restaurant that closed early in the pandemic.

Arechiga said he will employ up to 60 people at Casa Santa, which features a bar, private dining area, custom-made decorations and a wide-ranging menu. The restaurant cost about $2.5 million to open. That compares with $1.5 million for Verde’s Zionsville restaurant and about $500,000 for Quesa Tacos.

“We want to take people to eat here, and they think they’re in Mexico,” Arechiga said in an interview at Casa Santa while workers put finishing touches on the restaurant. “This is way bigger [than] the other ones. I don’t think it’s going to be an easy operation, but I think we’re ready to do it.”

Arechiga, who lives in Fishers with his wife and two daughters, said he saw the empty restaurant building nearly every day for a year on his commute.

“I always saw that restaurant, but at that time, I was like, ‘No, that’s too big for us,’” he said. “After one year, I thought, ‘I think we’re able to do it.’ And it was just about the feeling.”

When Arechiga thinks about opening a restaurant, he calls on a friend for help. Camilo Colonia, a managing broker for Indianapolis-based Velo Indy Real Estate Co., primarily works with Mexican restaurants and Latino-owned businesses in central Indiana.

Colonia said Arechiga especially likes leasing space in second-generation buildings at “good shopping centers.” Casa Santa is the first restaurant property he purchased. Colonia added that Arechiga “likes challenges” and is risky and ambitious.

“He’s always going out in Mexico to see what’s the new and cool stuff to do,” Colonia said. “His chefs get trained by other people that are higher up in the totem of Mexican chefs, so he’s putting in the effort.”

Arechiga grew up in Guadalajara, the capital city of the state of Jalisco in south-central Mexico. He travels to Mexico four to six times a year to learn about new food trends and popular decor that he can bring back to his restaurants.

His menus feature everything from staples like burritos, tacos and margaritas to seafood dishes found in the coastal areas of Mexico.

“We personally go to Mexico every time we have to open a restaurant and choose the furniture, decorations, lighting fixtures, everything,” Arechiga said.

Popular food

Mexican cuisine is popular in this country.

According to analytics company Brizo FoodMetrics, more than 73,000 Mexican restaurants operated in the United States at the end of 2020. That number represented 11% of all U.S. restaurants.

About 85% of U.S. counties have at least one Mexican restaurant, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from SafeGraph. The 15% that do not have a Mexican restaurant contain a total of only 4 million people, 1% of the U.S. population.

Arechiga noted that when he opened his first Verde Flavors of Mexico in Fishers, there were five Mexican restaurants within a 1-mile radius.

“All of them were selling the same thing … same combos,” he said. “So, for me, it was like, ‘How do I attract more customers if everybody offers the same thing?’ That’s where we started diving more into the menu, [offering more] drinks, bringing more professional people [to help] us to see, ‘How can we do it better?’ It was not an easy transition, but at the end of the day, we’re so happy to do it.”

Colonia said Arechiga and other Mexican-restaurant operators don’t worry about competition despite the ever-increasing number of restaurants.

“[They] respect each other’s boundaries. They’re not going to put another restaurant in front of the other guy,” Colonia said. “It’s become a staple of a lot of American food options. What family does not visit a Mexican restaurant at least once a month? And I think it’s much more frequent than that.”

Long history

Nicole Martinez-LeGrand researches Indiana’s Asian and Latino communities as the Indiana Historical Society’s multicultural collections director. She said one of the earliest examples of an Indianapolis restaurant selling Mexican food was an eatery called the Chili Parlor, which was operated by Felipe “Phillip” Gomez in the years following World War I at 450 W. 11th St. Like Arechiga, Gomez moved to the United States from Guadalajara.

Mexican food became in-fashion locally in the 1960s when people who were not of Mexican descent began opening restaurants in Indianapolis, according to Martinez-LeGrand.

A 1962 Indianapolis Star review of the Taco House at 7541 E. Washington St. said the restaurant specialized “in authentic Mexican food toned to Hoosier tastes” and referred to a taco as a “Mexican sandwich.” The restaurant also sold pizza in both “Mexican and Italian style, as well as half and half,” the article said.

Beginning in the 1970s, well-known Indianapolis restaurants like Acapulco Joe’s downtown and El Sol de Tala on the east side, both founded by Mexican immigrants, became popular destinations. Both restaurants closed in the past decade.

People of Mexican descent have lived in Indianapolis since the 19th century, Martinez-LeGrand said, but the population grew when the U.S. government looked to Mexico for labor relief during World War I, for railroad and national defense work.

The exact number of Mexican residents in Indianapolis during much of the 20th century is unknown because they were “statistically invisible” until 1980, when the U.S. Census Bureau began asking about Hispanic or Spanish descent on its nationwide survey conducted each decade, Martinez-LeGrand said.

From the early 1930s to the late 1960s, many Mexican families lived in an area near downtown bordered by North Street to the north, Market Street to the south, Pine Street to the west and Davidson Street to the east. The houses in the area were demolished to make way for Interstates 65 and 70.

Martinez-LeGrand said that, when people who move to Indiana from Latin American countries bring their food with them, “it’s kind of like your family’s home cooking.”

“It’s something that centers you, and then I think a lot of these people that create [restaurants], it’s great to start your own business. But also it’s a way to connect to other community members,” she said.

Growth plans

Arechiga is just getting started at Casa Santa, but he is already preparing for his next concept, called Piedra, which Colonia said will be “an even higher-end product.”

The first Piedra restaurant is set to open at the end of the year at the Bottleworks District downtown. Piedra will be on the first floor of the 120,000-square-foot, five-story flat-iron building nearing completion at the northeast corner of College and Massachusetts avenues.

Arechiga expects to begin work on the interior of his 5,000-square-foot space in May. Opening Piedra will cost $1.5 million to $1.8 million, he said.

The second phase of the Bottleworks District is being developed by Wisconsin-based Hendricks Commercial Properties. It also includes a 90,000-square-foot building at the southeast corner of Ninth Street and College Avenue. The buildings will feature 182,000 square feet of office space, 38,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and 260 parking spaces.

Arechiga previously worked with Hendricks when he opened Verde Flavors of Mexico at the Ironworks Hotel at East 86th Street and North Keystone Avenue.

“It was a no-brainer because we already know what they can deliver,” Colonia said. “He likes the product. He likes the relationship with them.”

Arechiga plans to open a second Piedra location in 2026 at the Union at Fishers District, which is expected to include about 250 luxury apartments, 60,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, 150 hotel rooms and up to 80,000 square feet of Class A office space.

Indianapolis-based Thompson Thrift Development LLC is the master developer of Fishers District. In 2022, the city of Fishers announced a major expansion at Fishers District that includes the Union, the Commons (an 8,500-seat events center, dining, retail and entertainment options) and Slate at Fishers District (a $63 million multifamily and garden home community).

Arechiga plans to open more of his fast-casual Quesa Tacos restaurants. He said an advantage of having multiple restaurant concepts is that he can open a full-service restaurant near a fast-casual restaurant, and they don’t compete.

He would like to expand to the south side of Indianapolis, and he would open a restaurant elsewhere in the state if the opportunity presented itself.

“It’s just about what we can afford and where we can do it, but I think at some point, we’re going to be able to do it,” Arechiga said.

Working a 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday job is not for Arechiga. He said the restaurant life is a 24-hour job “because, even if you’re not at the restaurant, your mind is there.”

“This is an every-day work. You got to keep 100% every day,” Arechiga said. “It’s not sometimes you’re able to do it or sometimes you’re not able to do it. It’s not an easy job. I really like what I’m doing. It’s about the passion of what I’m doing.”•