Eliyana ‘Ellie’ Huerta-Ortiz is 17 years old and a Senior at ALHS. She helps out in her family’s food truck, Mr. Taco. They serve Mexican food and cater to different types of events. Huerta-Ortiz helps with food preparation, but she mainly works in customer service by taking orders. She has met lots of different types of people working in the window. Huerta-Ortiz expresses how in the beginning of the food truck business, doing customer service was a challenge for her. She says that she had to expand on her communication skills in order to talk and interact with customers more efficiently. Patience is a skill that had developed from encounters with rude customers.

Since Huerta-Ortiz’s family caters to different events she has to learn how to adapt to different settings and conditions, like when the weather gets too hot. She has to push through  and keep her composure. Huerta-Ortiz says she enjoys helping out in the food truck, especially the type of food they serve, because it is a way of sharing her heritage to the different communities they cater to. 

Her family’s food truck also caters charity events, either donating the food or the profits. According to Huerta-Ortiz, organizers can have trouble finding vendors, willing to travel but seeing the communities come out to try out their food makes it worth it. 

 “I don’t know a single person who would stay at home if they heard a taco truck was in their town,” said Huerta-Ortiz. So in a way, not only is she helping Albert Lea locals by encouraging us to be more involved within our community, she does it with tacos.