Some food traditions get etched on the calendar. Think Taco Tuesday, or delivery pizza on the Friday of a long work week. That was the initial goal for Bocaditos Café owner Silvia Sanchez: get her small town to start craving empanadas the same way they do al pastor tacos or meat lover’s pizza.
Bocaditos began as a mother-daughter cafe, run by Silvia Sanchez and her daughter Juliana Cancelo, specializing in grab-and-go empanadas. They opened prior to the pandemic, which turned out to be somewhat of a good thing. They were already prepared for the take out business and committed to serving their community. But the aspirations have always gone beyond empanadas de carne and alfajores in a brown paper bag.
In 2021, they opened a full service location lined with bookshelves inspired by Juliana’s love of reading and mismatched antique china plates that do justice to scratch cooking. It quickly became a hotspot for neighborhood book clubs and conversations that continue long after the meal is over. Sanchez and Cancelo expanded their menu to include Argentinian wine and Cancelo’s homemade baked goods. They encouraged creativity in the kitchen and added Colombian specialties to the menu, inspired by their back-of-house team who hail from all over South America.
To pull it off, Sanchez and Cancelo needed a technology partner that allowed them to focus less on systems and more on building relationships.
Prior to switching to SpotOn, Juliana would handwrite orders on paper, which led to order delays and easily avoidable kitchen errors. Today, handhelds send orders directly to the kitchen, allowing staff members to spend less time at the terminals and more time with their guests, preserving the personal interactions that define Bocaditos.
Online ordering integrated with DoorDash and item counts on the restaurant point-of-sale help the small team stay organized. Seasonal menu items can be updated daily, menu inventory is synchronized across all systems, and most importantly, the staff can focus more on their customers and less on troubleshooting.
After years of changing systems, Juliana expected another challenging rollout. However, her team, with varying levels of comfort with new technology, adapted quickly.
Any single change that we make is so quickly picked up by the rest of the team. People go on vacation, they come back, they still feel like nothing has changed.
Juliana considers relationships one of SpotOn's key differentiators. "I talk to my reps like they're my friends," she said. "The personality that I have requires that kind of connection." For a business focused on making customers feel like family, partnering with a technology provider that shares these values has been essential.
That support became especially meaningful when Juliana's mother was diagnosed with cancer a year and a half ago. As priorities shifted, the team needed to operate more independently, and SpotOn made that possible.
The autonomy that it has given our staff is tremendous. Instead of getting asked, 'Can I do this? Should I do this?' it's just, 'Hey, FYI, we are doing this.' That shift was so necessary for my head space.
Confident that daily operations would continue smoothly, Juliana was able to focus on her family when they needed her most.
At Bocaditos, technology isn’t replacing the personal element; it’s protecting it. With SpotOn handling the operations, Juliana and her team have the freedom to do what inspired them to open their doors in the first place: share their hearts, their home, and their culture with every guest who steps into their café.
