CROTHERSVILLE — Growing up in Mexico City, Ernesto Boyzo Ruiz saw the time and effort his mother put into running her own restaurant.
When he moved to Seymour 22 years ago, he began working at Super Mercado Morales. He cooked, butchered, helped run the store and did other tasks for 10 years.
It was then time for him to find a job with good pay and benefits so he could support his family, so he took a job at Kremers Urban Pharmaceuticals in Seymour. He started as an operator and later moved up to trainer specialist and now is a manufacturing process trainer for the company, now known as Lannett Co. Inc. He has been there for nine years.
All along in the back of his mind, Ruiz wanted to apply his love of cooking in his own business.
This year, that became reality when the 37-year-old Seymour resident opened the GrillO’s Authentic Mexican Food food truck at 212 N. Armstrong St., Crothersville. He runs it with his wife, Dana, and daughter, Maria.
For someone who came from another country and had to learn English and adapt to different surroundings, Ruiz considers himself successful for putting in the time and effort to make a longtime dream happen.
“All my life, I wanted to have my own business,” he said, getting emotional while talking about his mother’s influence. “She has a small business in Mexico City. She sells food, too, at a Mexican restaurant for a long time. There’s nothing better than being your own boss. You can provide better for your family and just be able to have success in life little by little, take care of your family more than anything.”
After buying a fully equipped food truck from a couple in Ohio, Ruiz received his LLC at the beginning of this year and then insurance, ServSafe certification and Jackson County Health Department permit.
At noon May 11, GrillO’s was ready to operate in a parking lot in the heart of Crothersville.
“All of your dreams come true in America,” said Ruiz, who became a U.S. citizen Jan. 19, 2022. “Never forget that. So many people have forgotten that.”
He started out serving street tacos and churros and has since expanded his menu to include burritos, quesadillas, fajita taco salads, enchiladas, sopes, chips, salsa, queso, guacamole, pico de gallo, fried ice cream and pineapple whip ice cream.
Ruiz takes pride in serving authentic, homemade Mexican food.
“I want to offer the real taste of Mexico City food,” he said. “It’s the taste that I grew up with, and it’s not trying to imitate anybody, it’s not trying to replace anybody. It’s just authentic taste that I grew up with, and I would like people to experience that. It’s something different than commercialized restaurants. A small business like us, we are able to offer that.”
So far, Ruiz said Crothersville residents have been big supporters of the business, but people have come from other areas, too, including Seymour, Medora, Columbus, Madison and even Kentucky.
“The people in Crothersville, they are so welcoming to us. They are supporting us very well. It has been very wonderful. It has been very generous to us,” he said. “I’m so thankful and grateful they support my family like that and our business and our dreams, especially in a very small town like this.”
Since Ruiz is still working at Lannett, he operates the food truck whenever he’s not there, so hours vary. Those are regularly posted on the GrillO’s Authentic Mexican Food Facebook page.
Maria Ruiz left her job at Mi Casa Mexican Restaurant in Seymour to work with her dad.
“I’m grateful for my customer service skills that I learned there, and they treated me really nice there,” the 17-year-old said.
With GrillO’s, she takes customers’ orders and helps her dad in any way she can.
“Growing up, he has worked a lot, so now, I like spending a lot of time with him,” Maria said. “I’m so proud of him. I know it’s one of his goals he has always wanted to have, to meet, so it just makes me feel really good inside.”
Ernesto became emotional while talking about his family’s support.
“It’s a blessing from God,” he said.
So how did his business get its name? When he was a kid living in Mexico City, Ernesto would run across town from his house to a store and back, and the man who ran it said he was like a grasshopper. In that area, grillo is a type of insect similar to a grasshopper, so that became his nickname.
That’s in the logo for his business that was created by Celery Signs of Medora. Representing where Ernesto is from, it includes a grasshopper sitting on top of a mountain with a river and a forest below it.
“They said, ‘I’ve never made anything like this.’ I told him, ‘Well, this is what I want. I want something that’s authentic. I want something that means something for me,’” Ernesto said. “I told him what it was. He worked for like two or three days. He gave me the final. Then we got colors.”
The logo and lettering on the food truck are outlined in pink to represent his wife’s battle with breast cancer and green because it went with the other colors.
Ernesto said Dana was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer in 2015. After six months of treatment, the stage was lower.
“They performed the surgery, and she did radiation for six months, and she has been clear since then, thank God,” he said.
During that time, Ernesto switched jobs to have insurance and other benefits so he could support his family.
His co-workers and family knew it was still his dream to start a business.
“I love cooking,” he said, smiling. “Even all of my friends, they know I cook anything. What I make, I make big portions. They like it, they love it, so it has been in the back of my mind all of the time, like, ‘I want to do this.’”
He was able to apply what he learned from his time at Morales and since working at Kremers Urban/Lannett to get the food truck operational.
He didn’t have luck finding a location in Seymour that was the right size and price, but after talking to co-worker Dovie Stidham, he learned she had the property at 212 N. Armstrong St. in Crothersville that would allow him to park the food truck and use the nearby building for storage and food preparation.
“She’s a smart, successful, hardworking person, and she has what she has because she works so hard for everything she has,” he said of Stidham, who also runs a laundromat and event center in Seymour and owns other property. “She’s a wonderful person, and she helps a lot of people in her life.”
Now, Ernesto has his eyes on reaching the point where he can open a restaurant in the building and still have the food truck. That would allow him to expand his menu even more.
“Maybe by the end of the year when we’re covered financially because everything takes lots of money,” he said. “We want to stay here. I don’t want to go anywhere else because I’ve got pretty much everything here. There’s a lot more to come.”