Meet Sarina Ho and Cesar Moran | Founders of One Hot Minute

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sarina Ho and Cesar Moran and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sarina and Cesar, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
At the start of the pandemic, we were helping a friend with his Nashville hot chicken sandwich pop-up weekly. During that time, we developed a vegan sandwich recipe. We wanted to create a vegan recipe because we were learning about being more environmentally conscious and are in the process of transitioning to a predominantly vegan/vegetarian diet. Our friend eventually stopped his pop-ups, but we still had the desire to share our sandwich, which brought us to where we are now.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
We really want to provide customers with a high quality product and great customer service. There are so many average places out there and we really strive to stand out from the crowd. We are disappointed when our products fall short of our expectations, so we are really committed to excellence.

There’s a lot of risk involved with doing a pop up including financial and personal safety. You never know what is going to happen, but it’s a risk we’re willing to take to push our goals forward. As far as financial risk, we’re definitely on a crossroad where we’re debating whether to continue our careers or take a chance and pursue OHM full time. The economy is not in the best shape, but we still want to take a chance and fulfill our dream of opening a restaurant. We think the largest risk is actually not whether we make money, but rather wasting our time not doing what we really want to.

Cesar is originally from Peru, and his country’s cuisine has had a huge impact on the dishes we’ve created. Peru has a strong street vendor culture and his grandparents actually started off their business as street vendors. Sarina is Chinese and was raised in San Francisco. Born into a family that loves and values food, she is very passionate about how food can nourish and bring people together. Together, we want to create a brand that has a positive impact on the community and people who work with us.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Here’s a weekend itinerary for Los Angeles!

Friday evening:
– Dinner at Pearl River Deli
– Drinks/dancing at General Lee’s Cocktail House

Saturday:
– Coffee at Maru
– Hike Fern Dell Nature Trail
– Lunch at the pop up at Slammers at the Brain Dead Studios
– Visit to LACMA
– Dinner at Woon
– Dessert at Yoga-urt

Sunday:
– Brunch at Escala
– Walk around the Silver Lake Reservoir
– Dinner at Causita

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I believe that the most important factor behind our success is trusting in God and being surrounded by amazing family and friends. We have this feeling that everything has been falling into place at the right time, but we don’t really have an explanation of why we’re so fortunate. Our family and friends have been so supportive whether it’s helping us at an event, building our website, designing graphics, or sourcing supplies. We would really like to give a shout out to our friend Jeremy Awad who introduced us into the pop up world, and my mom, Margot, who is there with us every weekend helping us out in any way she can.

Website: onehotminutela.com

Instagram: @onehotminutela

Image Credits
Ryan Leuning