Rocco Mangel founded Rocco's Tacos & Tequila Bar in 2007. He grew up in the restaurant industry, working his way up from bus boy to general manager and later owner of a Mexican restaurant in West Palm Beach, Fla. Big Time Restaurant Group owns and operates the eight Rocco's locations throughout Florida and one in Brooklyn, N.Y.

FE&S: How did the first Rocco's come about?

Rocco Mangel, Founder and Managing Partner, Rocco’s Tacos & Tequila BarRM: I moved here in 1997, and I was a bus boy in the restaurant on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach that I bought 10 years later almost to the day. My father was in the restaurant business and my grandfather before that so I have worked at a bunch of different restaurants throughout my career and always on Clematis Street — for the 20 years I've been in Florida.

In 2004 I left the restaurant industry and got more involved in the nightclub business for a while. Then a friend of mine opened a Mexican restaurant and asked if I would be the maître d' and two weeks later I became the general manager. The restaurant served tableside guacamole and very authentic Mexican cuisine and I learned more about tequila so that's how I got my fix. I traveled all of the U.S. and in Mexico and that's how I came up with the concept for Rocco's Tacos & Tequila Bar. We focus on tableside guacamole and street-food tacos but I also wanted to emphasize tequila because it's still one of the top spirits in the country. I ended up partnering with Big Time Restaurant Group to open the first location in West Palm Beach in 2007. I'm considered a co-owner but, conceptually, all of us came up with the idea.

FE&S: How have you expanded the concept under Big Time Restaurant Group?

RM: After we opened the first location, we opened restaurants in Boca Raton in 2009; Fort Lauderdale in 2011; Palm Beach
Gardens and Orlando in 2012; Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2014 and Delray Beach in 2015. This year, we licensed the brand to open at the Fort Lauderdale airport and took possession of a new location in Tampa Bay in February. We have a couple other locations we're looking at on the West Coast of Florida right now.

FE&S: What's the size of the restaurants? Do they differ in design?

RM: Our restaurants usually range from about 4,500 square feet all the way to 14,000 square feet in Brooklyn with anywhere from 180 to 300 or more seats. The Orlando location is 10,000 square feet and the new Tampa restaurant will be about 6,000 to 7,000 square feet.

For each location, I travel to Mexico with my partner and we design the restaurants ourselves and hand-pick the decor. The furniture and the fixtures come from Mexico, then we ship everything across the border rather than work with a fabricator here, so it's very authentic. We do work with a local dealer for our equipment. Every restaurant looks a little different. We have a signature orange star chandelier and use certain colors, but every restaurant has a unique look. Our newest Delray Beach location looks significantly different than our original restaurant in West Palm Beach but you still know you're in a Rocco's.

FE&S: How did you develop the food menu?

RM: We have a wonderful culinary partner, Lisabet Summa, who leads the development of the menu, though we are all part of that effort. Our fresh-to-order, tableside guacamole continues to be a big hit. We're obviously a taco restaurant so we focus on Mexican street-style tacos with all the proteins as well as a mercado taco with adobe-rubbed grilled chicken, avocado salsa, papalo and chile de arbol on corn tortillas and a California fish taco with Mahi Mahi. I came up with the Rocco's Taco, which is seared tuna and fried wonton on three small proteins. We also have a more creative Korean taco with hoisin barbecue beef, kimchi, cilantro and smoky peanut salsa. One of our more popular, larger dishes is the molcajete, a Mexican lava rock bowl that comes to the table piping hot with a mixture of seafood, steak or chicken and vegetables with tortillas on the side.

FE&S: What about the tequila side of the restaurant?

RM: That's my area — I handle the drinks and the bar. I like to say I've tried to earn my masters in tequila. It's great to see so many more people interested in tequila.

Maybe 20 years ago when people thought about tequila they thought about how it would make them sick. There are so many more craft and small batch types available now. We find people are a lot more educated about tequila, almost like a wine connoisseur. That's why we have no less than 184 — all the way to 400 — varieties and brands of tequila in our restaurants. Our bar managers are basically tequila sommeliers.

FE&S: Bar design and business is so important to restaurants, even more these days. How do you design the tequila bar?

RM: The bars are designed, built and fabricated in Mexico, which gives us a unique look. My mother used to collect elephants and she passed away five years ago so I have added these elephant heads carved out of wood in the middle of the bar as a reminder of her. We try to maximize the potential for speed in our design, so we think carefully where to put the wells, the ice, and even how the doors swing open — if they swing to the left or right. Our bars are set right in the middle of the dining room so we feel they create this energy and ambiance in the room. In Brooklyn, the bar is more than 100 feet long and stretches the entire length of the restaurant.

FE&S: Mexican never gets old, and it can even be considered a crowded space. How do you stay ahead of the competition?

RM: We've been open for 10 years and collectively we change our concept and menu regularly so it's always fresh. We're about to roll out a new menu design for our Tampa location. We're not re-concepting, but we have noticed a trend where everyone is a lot more health conscious right now so we're going to offer tacos on lettuce wraps and other gluten free alternatives. We're also going to offer crudités like sliced radishes, carrots and celery with our tableside guacamole instead of just chips. Most people might think of Mexican food as really heavy, with all the cheese and sour cream, but we're focusing on grilled fish, fresh jicama, watermelon salad and a lot more organic-style foods.

The kitchen in Tampa will be a brand new, all-scratch kitchen so we can develop and test some of these new menu items. We're also introducing a wood-fired grill at the Tampa location to add more flavor to our ingredients. It will be a part of an open kitchen, which we've focused on with our newer restaurants because we know people like to see how their food is being made and how clean things are.

FE&S: You mentioned you oversee the drink development, but how would you describe your day-to-day job?

RM: We have a large corporation with almost 1,000 people, with Big Time Management Group handling the back of the house and another team handling the front. I basically oversee everything, but it's easier in this day and age with computers and state-of-the-art technology in real time. I can see how many people are in any restaurant at any given time all on my cell phone, and track what's selling and what's not, and look at the cameras. But I like to be hands-on so on any given day I might go into one of the restaurants and help out behind the bar or talk to our guests or help with promotions and marketing.

FE&S: How do you manage consistency across all the locations?

RM: We have a weekly recap talk about all the restaurants and how they are performing, weekly manager meetings and other daily recaps. The technology platform we use also helps me manage everything remotely, and it helps us really track our costs down to the cost of each napkin. We have very good systems in place, which helps with consistency in food, drink and service.

FE&S: You recently released Rocco's Spice. Tell me more about that decision and process.

RM: The spice is something we created in 2007 when the first Rocco's opened. We use it in a lot of dishes. People kept asking us for the recipe and we would give it away in plastic bags. We finally realized maybe this is marketable. It took two years to get the packaging and process down, but we've rolled it out and we're getting a great response already. We're working with brand placement experts to get the spice in local supermarkets and sell it online. We're also working on a line of margarita salt items and other things we can do to promote the brand. It's not a huge moneymaker for us at the moment, but it's an incredible marketing tool. People can open their cabinet and think of us and use us in dishes they cook for their family and friends. So it's a win-win situation.