July 2020 Interview with Nivia and Hector Piña, Co-Owners of Tres Islas Restaurant Group

Q1: Tell us about your business, how you got started, what you do, etc.
Tres Islas is a 26-year-old restaurant group that manages three restaurants in Boston—our first location, Merengue, then Vejigantes and Doña Habana. We began in 1994 with Merengue as a four-table restaurant with 20 seats and we’ve continued to expand from there. In 2001, we expanded Merengue to 100 seats, and then opened the other restaurants in 2012 and 2016. Doña Habana is the first Latino-owned restaurant inside a hotel in Massachusetts.

Hector came to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 26 years old. Nivia graduated from Brandeis University with a degree in biochemistry. After marrying Hector, Nivia joined the restaurant business where they now work together.

Q2: What was your experience with financial inequity?
We had a hard time accessing capital and this was one of the biggest strengths of participating in the Foundation for Business Equity’s Business Equity Initiative (BEI) program, along with our Strategic Advisor. The Foundation for Business Equity is a game changer for small minority businesses in the inner city. When Merengue first expanded, we participated in different federal programs designed to help small businesses but they lacked access to capital. The absence of capital is very important to any business and the Foundation for Business Equity has changed this.

Q3: How did you come in contact with Foundation for Business Equity (FBE)?
We catered FBE events for other businesses as they completed the BEI program and saw its real impact. We met Glynn, FBE’s Executive Director and the team running the BEI program. They knew our business and offered to see if they could help us. When we heard the testimonials from the participating businesses, getting involved with this program interested us even more. It offers everything for a small business to put itself in a different position for funding and growth.

Q4: What were you able to accomplish together?
Our effort through the Foundation for Business Equity’s BEI program completely revamped our way of working. Our Strategic Advisor helped us navigate what the industry standards are for pricing and labor costs. We put in place a new POS system that gave us a breakdown of every minute of our work to hold us accountable. We can access centralized reports from anywhere to evaluate areas including payroll, labor costs, and the cost of goods. Having this structure for our organization opened doors for us, and our Strategic Advisor came extremely well-versed and provided a macro view of our business and the restaurant sector. This all gave us more confidence to run our business.

The FBE offered the help we needed administratively and organizationally. We had gotten to where we were able to get to because we had a good product but now we’re better organized administratively and we rely upon our financial statements to back up what we’re saying. This was a pivotal moment for us.

We have been able to endure during the pandemic, and apply for loans and grants to support our business, because of the ways the Foundation for Business Equity helped us navigate our business model. Using the parameters we put in place, we knew how we could operate to make a profit even during difficult times. We have applied everything we learned and with the Foundation for Business Equity’s help, we have been better able to respond to the pandemic and produce quickly.

Q5: What do you have to say to other business owners especially now? 
Take advantage of these programs. We also try to give back in the ways that we can – delivering food packages to the elderly, buying overflow produce from a nonprofit group. Keeping our business open and providing a job for our employees is also important.