Q&A with A Bite With Mee co-founders Robyn Klingerman and Jairo Aleman
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Robyn Klingerman and her husband, Jairo Aleman, started A Bite With Mee, a Korean-Mexican fusion catering company, in 2015. The couple officially registered the business in 2019 as they began to plan for long-term success.
A Bite with Mee specializes in delicious, healthy food with vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options. Creating educational awareness by providing and encouraging healthy, local, organic, eco-conscious, and sustainable practices, as well as building community and connections is at the heart of everything the couple does.
The couple spoke with Inside INdiana Business on leaving full-time employment to focus on the business, navigating entrepreneurship, purchasing their first food truck and expansion plans. This article has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Can I get a bit of your background?
Robyn: I’m Robyn, my Korean name is Mee Sun. I was born in South Korea, adopted and raised here in South Bend. I started this food business trying to connect to my Korean roots. My parents are both white and my partner Jairo who is Mexican actually taught me my first Korean dish. He went to culinary school at Ivy Tech and has a huge passion for Asian culture and cuisine. When I tasted the first dish, I started thinking of ways to change and adapt to flavors that I like.
After college, I started volunteering on organic farms; that’s where I also started to find more of my passion and connection to food, growing it and cooking it. I also prepared food at the Common Goods Co-Operative Grocery run by Our Lady of the Road that’s still the space we rent for our commissary kitchen. So I started preparing foods there and found more of a passion again and started to wonder if I could do this as a business. Jairo at the time would come visit and help me prepare the dishes or package things on his breaks in between work.
Jairo: My parents moved here from Mexico. My dad got into farming and my mom started making blueberry and peach jams. Cooking was always a part of my family. I remember she would make these big Southern-style biscuits that were so good. My mom was really into cooking, and that’s how I started getting into cooking as well. That led me to attending Ivy Tech because my mom encouraged me to find a career in cooking. I loved Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network, and my mom thought cooking would be a good fit.
During that time, I met Robin and we always kind of talked about opening up a food service and she particularly wanted to have a food truck.
Do you have a food truck now?
Jairo: Not yet, but soon. We started with catering different pop-up events around the region, art festivals, Fusion Fest and things like that. We expanded into Michigan last year. We recently got approved for a loan to get a food truck, so that should be happening here pretty soon.
What was the process for getting the loan for the food truck?
Jairo: The process basically started five years ago without us even realizing. As with any investment from any bank, they want to see the traction of your money and how you’re taking care of that money. So we had been doing spreadsheets with the money and taxes for the business. That’s mainly what any bank or any institute that’s going to give you a loan wants to see. They also want to see the community supporting the business as well.
It was pretty hard to constantly keep track of everything because Mee Sun did all the paperwork and also had a full-time job, and we just tried to balance all that out. We considered hiring somebody, but they were charging $500 a month and we couldn’t afford that, so she had to do it. So making sure that the numbers are adding up, that you’re a profitable business, which we are.
We also got help from the people at Indiana Small Business Development Center, Sam Centellas at CDFI Friendly. The ISBDC was a very big help because they really guided us through the steps and connected us with so many people.
When you think about the past five years tracking your finances, building the business, what’s one of the biggest challenges you’ve had to face?
Robyn: I guess each year we learn more about the spreadsheet and the different categories we need to be putting in. The first year our categories were very small. We might have had four lines, invoices, money coming, cost of goods sold, etc. Now there’s over 20 different lines just within operational expenses. There’s eight different lines for cost. There’s now 12 different lines for where money comes in from. So we’re still learning each step. As tax season comes up, and we have a different tax preparer that tells us we need another line to start tracking things. So just each year we’re learning and growing and figuring out how you’re supposed to do it as a business.
What’s the story behind your favorite dish?
Jairo: I think for me, it would be the tacos enchilados, which is a take on a regular birria. The reason why we call it that is because it’s not technically a birria taco. And it kind of takes 10 of the same steps as making an enchilada but it’s in a taco form. So that’s something that stands out to me. It’s one of my favorite dishes because it combines a lot of the Mexican and Korean flavors together. We take beef, beef chuck, and we braise it for five hours with kimchi and an adobo sauce that we make that’s a little bit different from the traditional Mexican adobo. We shred the beef, we take all the liquid from that, we skim the fat off of it, and we make a broth out of the liquid and we coat the tortillas in the fat before we fry it. Then we put cheese on it, shredded beef, kimchi, cilantro, green onion, goat cheese and our house made Kochi sauce.
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Aleman and Klingerman chop some vegetables (photo courtesy Evan Cobb photography)
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Vegan Nachos (photo courtesy Krista Kuskye photography)
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Japchae (photo courtesy Krista Kuskye photography)
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Tacos Enchilados (photo courtesy Krista Kuskye photography)
How do you maintain authenticity with the fusion of cultures and flavors?
Robyn: The dish that Jairo first showed me, japchae, is a Korean sweet potato glass noodle dish. We now make that dish in our own way. I know that some Korean grandmothers come up to the booth, and are shocked because japchae is supposed to taste bland. I don’t like it bland, so it’s our own take on it. Sometimes what’s traditional might not be what is authentic to you. What we do is authentic to what we are representing and what we’re bringing, but it’s definitely not your traditional sense of what you may be used to your grandmother making for generations. We also make our own kimchi.
Jairo: We don’t disregard the tradition, we honor the tradition and we also mold things to our palate. People have been really receptive to it too because they always say, ‘Man, we would never have thought Korean and Mexican would go so well.’ A couple people that have come from California or New York always tell us our fusion would do really good out in those cities. This is definitely something from the culture that has not hit Indiana so we’re kind of blessed that we can just try it and see what people think.
Are you both working on the business full-time now?
Robyn: Yes, we are. Before I was working in the kitchen at Chicory Cafe and Jairo was the head banquet chef at the Chicory Mishawaka event hall. He’s also worked at Morrison at Notre Dame and Cafe Navarre but we soon realized we couldn’t do both at the same time.
I cut the ties first, at the end of 2020. I feel like 2020 gave a lot of people perspective and made people think about what was important. I wanted to start working on the business full on, and it was a big leap of faith because we also decided to also buy our first house at the end of 2020. We were able to pivot into doing drop-off meals for people during COVID. We made pre-packaged meals and dropped them off at people’s doorsteps. Jairo was still working until we had our youngest last May. It was that month Jairo got laid off. He finally got out of the restaurant industry and went to do RV work just to make extra money faster since I wasn’t working anymore.
When he took that job, he asked God to let him know when it was time for us to do the business together, put our faith and trust in Him and sure enough, he got laid off shortly after. It gave him time to be with me while I was pregnant and he was able to take over some of the catering orders we had.
It was still hard last year looking at the numbers because it now reflected pulling two incomes from the business versus only taking a little bit here and there to pay for things and putting it all back into the business. So even though we did more sales last year than we did the year before, pulling two incomes made it look like we didn’t make any money for the business. So that allows us to now shift this year on how we can make the numbers make sense. We might have to increase prices so that we’re able to pay ourselves, payments on a food truck, payment for help in the kitchen. So it was a good thing for it to happen so that we could see where we need to move and progress to.
Do you currently have any employees or do you do all the work by yourselves?
Robyn: We do most of the work, but in the past we would have friends that would work for tacos or some payment and I would do the 1099 at the end of the year if they exceeded 600 hours. But most of the time, it’s just us and our kids. Our oldest is 12 so she likes to run the register at the events and get the drinks. Our middle one is 7, she is in charge of quality control, she’ll make sure that the food is right where it needs to be. We’re hoping to bring in Jairo’s nephews this summer for the food truck. They’re 17 & 18 and interested in helping with the family business. So we’re happy to get more people on board.
When do you expect to start working out of the food truck?
Robyn: So we talked to Overhill Concessions and they are holding a food truck for us. We were able to put some money down for them to make a few changes. So we should open pretty quickly, and then it’ll depend on how fast I can get the permits finished through the city of South Bend and to apply for the one we need in Michigan. We plan on doing Munchie Mondays in Buchanan, Michigan. On Wednesdays we are at the Purple Porch Farmers Market and Food Truck Wednesday in Mishawaka as well.
Looking forward to the next five to 10 years, what’s the grand vision for your business?
Jairo: It’s going to be basically replicating the same business model for us, partnering with the local farms and local businesses to help them grow while we also grow as a business. So not just having a food truck here in South Bend but maybe having a food truck in Traverse City, Michigan, or Dayton, Ohio—areas where we can find a community that is looking for something different. So that’s the 10-year goal. We would also like to get more into the catering business, doing weddings and celebrating with people.
Another thing that’s important for us is collaboration to do with different artists in the area, magnets, candles, mugs, etc. These artists do really nice work and we just like supporting local artists who are wanting to see our business grow too. So most of our merchandise is designed right here in South Bend; we try not to outsource anything.