Andrew Vassiliadis of San Diego Loyal SC: A Soccer Team That’s for the Culture

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Comes out every other week@freshbroodtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode and welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom. I'm so thrilled to have Andrew Vasiliadis on. Chairman of the San Diego. Loyal Andrew, thanks for coming on the pod. It's about time.

Neil, it's great to see you. Thank you for your patience as we got this together.

Yeah, I know we've been talking about it for a while. I think we've known each other maybe a year and a half when Interlock Capital was first looking at investing and then did so into the layl. So good to get to know you over a few seasons now here with soccer in San Diego.

Well, thank you for believing in us and getting interlocked behind us, part of the crew. I hope you guys are enjoying the ride. It's pretty crazy at times.

We love it. We love it. We've got, we got season tickets. So someone is always out there cheering from the crew here. And we just love, you know, business, community supporting another great business and great players who believe in the community that we're all building in. Do you want to give us a quick high level what San Diego Loyal is? Because I think it'd be nice to kind of set the tone so that everyone knows.

Absolutely. So San Diego Loyal Soccer Club is a men's second division pro soccer team here in San Diego, California. Most people are familiar with Major League Soccer, which is considered Division 1 of the soccer landscape, and then the USL Championship, which is the league that San Diego Loyal is in, is considered Division 2. And then we have other leagues that fall below that until you get to semi professional soccer, which is his own beast.

Awesome.

Great.

Well, we're going to talk a lot of soccer and I'm sure you played a little bit as a kid, but let's take it back a little bit, kind of how you got here, because not a lot of people are have a career path to own a soccer team. Take me through kind of like where you grew up and what you did kind of to start your kind of professional career.

Absolutely. So born and raised here in San Diego, grew up around San Diego State, which is kind of the Mission Valley area of San Diego. Kind of central located for those that don't know it. My father had established a real estate company here in San Diego that has done quite well for itself. And my parents were very adamant as I was pursuing my education, to follow your dream. If real estate was that dream, then they were happy to bring me in and, you know, show me the ropes. But if it was something else, they told me to go and pursue that. So my passion was music. So I went and pursued a music career and that led me from instrument to a DJ career. Before, it was the coolest thing to do. It seems like everybody's a DJ these days. But back in 1999, it wasn't as cool as it is now. So for 15 years, I got to pursue that. It's a gritty world at times. You learn about your a lot about yourself and about others. But through that I was able to find individual success and then success with a business partner launching a company called Another Way of Life, which put on destination music events, most notably in Cabo and in Cancun. But we also did events at winter ski resorts, events at major cities, and then eventually we took it over to Europe and Went to Croatia. That job and lifestyle was mostly based in the evening hours. So I had had this chunk of my day that was available to me that I really wanted to do something that really gave back, right, that. That did some good for my soul outside of what the music career was providing me. And at the time, I was living with a best friend who got back into teaching at not our high school that we went to, but our rival high school, which is the Bishop School up in La Jolla. He was teaching, and with his teaching, he started coaching at the middle school level, both soccer and volleyball. And he would come home, like just over the moon about those experiences. And I said to him, I was like, man, I'd really love to join you. This would be a great way for me to connect back to the sports that I play. And I played soccer and volleyball growing up throughout my life. So that brought me back into those worlds of those communities of people. So I started talking to soccer coaches that I used to have, players that I used to play with, and just brought me back in. And I ran into a gentleman that knew my family for a long, long time, another Greek gentleman who had kind of started dropping hints of thinking about bringing professional soccer to San Diego. He didn't have the financial means to do so, but he was trying to see if I was interested in doing it. So eventually he brought to me a project called the Tampa Bay Rowdies, which are a USL championship team in the Eastern Division, obviously in Tampa Bay, really looked at the project. There's some history with that franchise. They've been around for quite a bit of time. But at the end of the day, I didn't love Tampa the way I love San Diego. And I just couldn't see myself moving. I couldn't see myself running its satellite from here in town. But it really got the juices flowing about what we could do with San Diego loyal, or what would eventually be San Diego loyal. And so I said to him, I was like, look, we gotta find this but here in San Diego. So the next thing he brought to me, and this was at a very early stage, was what was at the time 1904 FC, another club that has now changed names and blah, blah, blah. But at that time, they were talking about academy, they weren't talking about a professional team. And there's a lot of if, ands or buts and all very wishy washy. And once again, I to pass. So that summer was about 2019. I start my day the same way I do, reading through Apple News, different articles that kind of a thing. And I come across a Sports Illustrated article that has the name Warren Smith and Landon Donovan on it and how they're looking to bring a USL Championship franchise to San Diego. I'd done my research on the USL Championship, so I knew that was what that was. I obviously knew who Landon was, but I needed to dig in on who Warren Smith was. Warren had a tremendous track record of success in the USL Championship and also in Minor League baseball. So what I saw was a steward of U.S. soccer and Landon Donovan and a gentleman who had the business acumen to really set us off on the right foot. And once I had met the two of them, I got to meet the extended team that Warren had already started to build at that early stage. And I once again was impressed with the quality of people that he had put together. You know, I didn't walk into a room and he goes, yeah, here's my uncle's best friend's nephew. And, you know, something like that. These were serious people with credentials from the NBA and Major League Baseball and different soccer fields as well. So once that kind of all came together, it was then a financial decision of whether I could do it. I always looked at being the piece of a puzzle. I never thought that I would be the outright chairman of a club. And obviously with that commitment came a different financial commitment. So I had to wrap my head around all that. But I thought the time was right. You know, Chargers have left town. Padres are doing what they're doing and they've become very successful, which is wonderful. And then outside of some other projects that are in town, like the San Diego Goals or the Seals or the San Diego Legion, this town plays and watches a ton of soccer. And I saw an opportunity to bring soccer to the community. That's where we sit now. Should we have started in 2020? Maybe not, but that's a different discussion.

Yeah, no, totally incredible to have joined that and pick up the momentum. I mean, luckily there was a little bit of momentum around Soccer City and, you know, like, it got some press and some whipping up around, do people want soccer here? It made it to a ballot, so obviously that helped and elevate the soccer conversation right around all of that as well, too. And then to actually come to fruition, not shortly, I mean, not that long after, really, to pull together a team. Like, what was the whole timeline from, like, meeting Warren and Landon to actually being a USL team.

Yeah, so that's. I don't know if we need to write a book about it, because I'm sure, other people have done this in a quick fashion as well, but when you lay out the timeline, that article I talk about reading is in June of 2019. I meet Warren for the first time in July, and we hammer out a business agreement by October of 2019. And the league at that point says to us, do you want to go in 2020 or do you want to go in 2021? And we came to the decision to go in 2020 for a couple of reasons. That 1904 club that I had talked about earlier, they had started going and they had changed from academy now to a third division pro team, and they were thinking about launching in 2020 as well. And so it was about jumping out in the marketplace and making sure that we were the first thing that people saw. So From October of 19 to March of 2020 is when the whole team gets put together and most people probably don't know this part of the story. Landon brings in his assistant coach, Nate Miller, kind of after the process has already begun, and he takes a look at the roster and isn't very happy with what's there. And so we're shifting out players and bringing players in kind of right up until we get going in 2020. So, yeah, it was intense.

You guys made it happen quick. Wow, that's incredible. I mean, it hap you. Luckily, you've got Warren at the time, who've been there, done that before, you know, multiple times. So he just brings the playbook and is like, all right, everyone operate right?

A hundred percent.

Yeah. And obviously Landon knows how to talk to players, so. And recruit them. So, yeah, it's a magic team. Go there. So, okay. Obviously Covid gets in a little bit of the way of the fanfare of launching the league, but really kind of gives you a little bit of time to build and feel out the community. Because you guys started doing stuff pretty much immediately during COVID of just like brand building and things like that, correct?

Yeah, 100%. And I would love to say that was all motivated by wanting to connect to the community, but it was also motivated by a responsibility that we had to our sponsors. Stone radies, they've all committed a lot of money to a product that they thought was going to be in the stadium with fans coming in and out and experiencing it, buying beer and doing that whole part. And that all goes away in the flash of a minute. So, yes, one was about connecting. Two was about delivering for our sponsors and making sure that they wanted to be with us in 2021. So we had to do Some very creative things. One that got us in a lot of trouble. Stone was at the time running a campaign where they were flipping the labels on all their beers. So they're upside down. So when you poured the beer, they were right side up. And as kind of a nod to them and their launch of that, we tried to do the same thing by not only flipping their name upside down on the front of the jersey, but flipping our crest upside down, which was a big no, no from our supporters. And, you know, one of those educational lessons for me of like, why would you ever take something so sacred and put it upside down? That belongs to you? That's something that other teams will do to your crest to show disrespect. It was not meant in a disrespectful manner at all. It was meant to deliver for a partner. But it's just funny when those things kind of cross streams every once in a while, trying to do the right thing for one, and then you end up upsetting the others. But I think that was also the hardest thing to understand was what was the community in 2020? I was sitting in the stadium, empty stadium, every home match. And by the. It was a condensed season, but by the third one, I remember turning to my wife and going, you know, does anybody care? Like, there's no way to. There's no ESPN numbers coming in for me to look at. There's no. Nobody coming into the stands. Like, we were selling some merchandise to the website and stuff, but were we hitting the right notes? Was just impossible to figure out.

That's super interesting. Kind of leads to the question, because I know you guys have these great four pillars. You have an amazing supporters community, which I think are unique for Americans to see in sports, to be honest. Right. It's a very much. That's. Soccer is just a different beast when it comes to commitment, mission, and values that I think Americans are used to seeing. How early did those start being talked about, and how did they kind of bubble up and become pillars? Because I'm sure they're called something else.

Originally, yeah, it was early work. It was intentional work from the beginning to understand that if you don't set up that structure, then what do your employees, what do your fan base, what do they have to look to understand what you are representing? And then on the other side, we had to make sure that we were representing their values. So one of the things that I liked about the people that Warren brought in is some of them were in San Diego, some of them were not. But we added A bunch of locals to that group. So we kind of get a temperature. And then we started going out and doing listening sessions with the community. We talked to fans of soccer, we talked to people who didn't care any, anything about soccer. We talked to the arts community, we talked to parents. We wanted to get their temperature on all kinds of different things. And you know, we can look to. The name of the club is kind of one of the biggest genesis of that. So many people would express really emotionally what the Chargers leaving San Diego meant to them. And everybody, you know, to one degree or the other said what we want is something that's loyal to our city. And that's where we land on the name and the pillar. The pillars of commitment and competition. All that is kind of from the same vein and then also driven by, I would say, Landon's ethos. Landon has a big part on all of that. And if you look at the end of 2020 and the stance that we had to make with the racial slur and the homophobic slur against the club, we had those four pillars up, but those things became rock solid when that event happens. And once again, I don't think we are able to navigate that situation in the way that we did if we didn't have that structure in place of who we are and able to look back and say, well, wait a minute, if these are our pillars, how can we allow this to happen? Right? We had come up with that slogan at the time. We will speak. We will act. We were presented with a moment to act and we had to do it in that moment. And without that structure, it would have been much harder, I think.

What a statement to make though, as well. I mean, first year club to stand and act like it made headlines around the world, you know, and here's a minor league team playing in. In front of no one, right? And doing this like there wasn't necessarily a lot on the line except everything going forward now is right. Like that's what's kind of cool about like having the ethos and actually standing by them. Because now you've got this foundation and you've set the mold, I guess, in that regard. How has that gone going forward? So now you have this whole year, first year in front of a full. Well, a whole. A full year in front of a crowd. Like what is that? Like a whole, almost a whole year later.

It's great. I mean, last season we started off still in a condensed kind of environment and then we're able to open up. So by the end of Last season, we were kind of actualizing some of the numbers that we were hoping to see by the end of it. And then it ends and you're like, all right, we got to wait three months, four months, whatever it is, and we get going again. And we had set an average ticket number that we wanted to hit for this season that we haven't hit on average at all. And we're consistently hitting it this year. I think we missed on Wednesday night against Oakland, but we're trying to work actually on next year's schedule to avoid Wednesday night games completely so we don't run into issues like that. So to hit numbers in the right way that we want to, not only through the ticket aisle, but also at the merchandise tent. Partnership with Charlie this year has been huge for us, but for me, on a more emotional level, just watching those supporters groups get together and cheer the way they do. Families and friends seeing each other at least once a week or maybe once every other week when they normally wouldn't get to see them. When you guys take your season tickets and get to sit next to your group of people that, you know, normally don't get to see just those interactions. Being able to honor different parts of our community. We have a Filipino Heritage Night coming up. We had our Mexican Heritage Night. We had a Greek Heritage Night. The different communities that we represent. We did Escondido this year, and I think we did El Cajon this year. Just highlighting the different aspects of San Diego have been really enjoyable to watch.

Absolutely. I mean, the community piece of, like, tying into every community. Is that the 1886, right?

I think that's correct. 1886 initiative.

What? Tell us more about that.

So if I get it right, it's 18 cities and 86 neighborhoods, or I forget what the verbiage is right there. But when most people think of San Diego, they just think of it centrally. Right. When you go, really San Diego county, you're talking oceanside all the way down to the border. And it's about involving the entire community. I live here in Point Loma. I think you're up in north county yourself. And we all. We can all can agree that we get stuck in our bubbles, right? We have our restaurants, we have the things that we like to do, but we have some really unique and really great parts of San Diego that we don't spend a lot of time in it. So that's what this initiative was about. So we pick a part of San Diego, like, let's say in this case, Escondido, and for that week we go into Escondido and we bring San Diego loyal to them. We do that by bringing practice to a local high school. We do that by bringing our community work to highlight maybe a different small business or something that's going on in Escondido in the coming weeks or months. And then we invite them to enjoy a match. And then at the match, we make sure that everybody match understands who Escondido is and what they represent and what my hope is that somebody sees that in National City and goes, hey, I'm going to go check out that small boutique place that they showed us. Or maybe the next time that high school team plays their high school team, they go and check it out. And then for those high school kids themselves, it's just so much fun. I make it a point to make it to those practices. It's not just soccer kids that get to come watch it. It's all the students that get to come out and see something that they probably don't normally get to see. Which professional athletes work at the highest level, which can be fun to watch. Sure, yeah.

And take us through a little about, like, the progression of, like, what soccer, running a soccer organization is, because I know a lot of players from lmls will cycle through. You guys have also brought soccer to Mexico and Mexico has come here. Like, what's that soccer team community like from that Participation.

Yeah. So you said a word a little while ago that made me cringe a little bit. You said, we're minor league and I don't like. Oh, sorry, I did. No, you're fine. You're allowed to say it. You're not the first or the last. But it's just the idea of, you know, we are blessed in this country to have the highest level of sport at almost every sport, right. Basketball, football, baseball, like, we get to see the highest level. So anything below that we consider minor league. Right. But if you look at Europe and how many levels of soccer there are in each country and how teams can kind of fluidly move up and down divisions, which you can't do here, that's an obvious difference. We really have to change that mindset. And that's one of the things that we have to work on. We are not minor league. This is just Division 2 soccer. And to, to your point, we have players at all different steps of their journey. We have guys that have played at the highest level, whether it be Major League Soccer or over in Europe who are kind of, you know, seeing their careers out and maybe one step lower. We've got guys like Nick Moon this year who have been in the USL Championship for a few years, and they've got MLS eyes on them, hot and heavy, and maybe they're ready to jump to the next level. Another example would be Evan Conway, who's on our roster this year. He was one league below us, which is USL League One, which is Division 3 soccer. To make it more confusing, he won a championship with Union Omaha of Omaha, Nebraska, was the leading goal scorer there, and has now become one of the top goal scorers in the USL Championship. So if he can make that jump from the league below to up, can he make the next jump? And that's something else we watch and then something I'm very excited about. And by the time this is out, it will be announced we will be signing our first ever Academy player to a professional contract. And to me, as somebody who grew up here in San Diego, that is the ultimate dream, providing the professional pathway from the youth program all the way to the first team. So this kid is 15 years old right now. He's a goalkeeper. He's got the US Youth national team looking at him. And if he starts getting some minutes with us, I don't think it will be a lot of time before he's seen bigger teams come after him. So it's a really fun thing. There's a lot of guys from a lot of different countries on our roster, and their journeys are in different places. And how they all come together is really fun to watch.

It is incredible, and it can't be overstated how big of a soccer town San Diego is from youth all the way up. I mean, the Surf cup, people talk about it on the east coast, like worldwide about it. I mean, let our audience know, like, how big of a community soccer is, soccer in this community, even though way before we had a team.

Yeah. So one of the driving factors of whether you should bring a professional sports team to a city is two things. Do they watch the sport and do they play the sport? You will see. I forget which publication does it, but they will put out the national TV numbers for US Men's and women's national team games that are broadcast across the country. San Diego is always in the top five, if not the top three, especially in the women's category. You'll see them, you know, top one every once in a while. So they're watching. And then on the other side, are they participating? San Diego is in the top three, I think, for both youth and adult participation in soccer. And then to your point, Surf isn't just the best club team in San Diego. It's not just the best club team in California. It's considered the best club team in the United States with the biggest soccer tournament for both men and women's held every year. So that is the juggernaut that is club soccer. And there are others, like Nomads, who've been around for a long time here in San Diego. They're stalwarts of the club community. The unfortunate thing is, for a long time, if your journey at the highest level was at Surf or at Nomad, if you wanted to go professional, you then had to leave San Diego. You had to go to LA or Houston or Dallas or, you know, one of these other Major League Soccer markets. We look to change that. We have started Loyal select, which is the baby steps of our Academy program. But we as, as we look towards training facility and kind of opening up our own place, if that can really happen. You will see Academy expand upon that and then we will start playing our flags and see what we can do and provide a used, you know, used pathway all the way through Boyle to the first team.

Wow, that's super cool to see. I mean, I remember, I think, was it from the beginning you've had, like, open tryouts where people can come right, and make the team. And to already have someone who's made it two years in, that's pretty cool to say that you've already kind of planted the roots for that.

Yeah, yeah.

What's the. There's been some, like, friendly matches against the team across the border where.

Cholos.

Cholos. It feels like soccer is, you know, maybe in another orbit down there. What's the community like across border and sharing this love for soccer?

It's incredible. League annex, the league down there is its own beast. You have some really stalwart teams that really kind of run that league, whether it be Club America or Pumas. Those are kind of the big national brands. Cholos has come on later. I think there are newer franchises, if I remember correctly, but they have become a powerhouse. Even winning a championship not too long ago. I don't know if it was last year or the year before. Growing that relationship is extremely important to me. There are 6,000 people, from the data that we get, 6,000 people that cross the border from San Diego down to Tijuana to go watch their matches. So how do we capture those 6,000 people and bring them to San Diego? Loyal matches? And then on top of that, it really is more than just about soccer. When we talk about building across the border. Soccer is an avenue to talk about greater things. There are so many similarities between what happens here and what happens across our border that we need to start dialogue with those groups. So bringing them here, us going down there, is just a way to do that. How we can start having conversations and showing our community here in San Diego that the community of Tijuana reflects values that are similar to ours and that we can enjoy this game of soccer together. So we have hosted Cholos now twice up here. We look to go down there. And then I mentioned their name earlier, Charlie, which is our kit sponsors. They make our jerseys and training gear. They dress Cholos as well. They do all their stuff. They also dress more teams in Liga Max than anybody else, more than Nike, more than Puma, more than Adidas. So that has opened up the door for us to explore other teams. Leon, where the factory of Charlie, or sorry, the headquarters of Charlie is, has a League MX team, we're talking about possibly going down there and doing something with them. So not just directly across our border, but with all of Mexico, we're talking about possibly a couple of friendly matches that don't necessarily include us, but maybe some League MX teams that we can bring up here to San Diego and showcase maybe against a Premier League team or a Serie A team or a team from Spain or something. So building that bridge is more than just about soccer. It's about bringing our communities together.

Totally agree. It doesn't hurt when we feel pretty big, which I know we did this year, but still, the communities coming together is pretty cool to see, that's for sure. As a chairman, you balance a lot in terms of priorities of running, helping run an organization. From stadium conversations, where to invest in community players. You're eyeing future potential mls, like how do you prioritize and how do you kind of look at the big picture that you're trying to build and help grow the loyal on?

I think the last couple words you used there are the most important big picture. After kind of a little bit of a rocky start in my executive team after things got going, we have really solidified that office and I've got a good team working there. And so I don't need to spend as much time as I did in the first two years focusing on day to day operational things. I really feel like this group can handle that and deal with it. So I have really enjoyed this year locking into those big picture items. Stadium is one of them. Like you talked about, we have a couple of different options that are in front of us one looks pretty close to being done. So I'm excited about that. And then the next thing, like I mentioned a little while ago, its training facility, we have a great relationship with the Chula Vista Elite Athletic Training Center. That's a mouthful, but I see San Diego, loyal, running its own facility at its top level and not only providing professional fields, but community fields, access to different kinds of events and then just another revenue driver for the club. People coming through the turnstiles is one way. Building out your academy and working the youth side is another way of doing that. So looking at that has been fun. And then community partners, I don't know if it was set up this way, but we have a lot of them renewing going into next year. So building those relationships, making sure they're happy, making sure they know who I am, making sure they know what my goals are for the future so they understand where this is headed, have really been my focus for this season and so far it's going well.

Incredible. Well, this being the tacos and tech podcast, we got to know does tech find its way onto the soccer field at all? Like is where does tech being a big player in San Diego and where does that, where do we meet? Somewhere in the middle.

Oh well, you teed that up really nicely. I'll say this first. We discussed a little while ago about minor league, right? And that whole image. If we are going to be considered or want to be in the conversation with the top leagues around the world, then we need to be investing in pro technologies because that's what the best clubs in the world are doing. So just recently we had our mid year owners meetings down in Louisville where all the owners get together and they vote on new items for the upcoming season and so forth. And one of the things I was hoping to hear about was VAR video assistant referee, not the full blown version with the augmented reality line doing offsides. I'm just talking basic video review, the ability to look back at a play to make sure that you got the call right. Unfortunately it wasn't discussed but I pulled the president aside later and I kind of said what I said right here. If we're going to be a serious league, if we want to be taken seriously, then we need to start investing technologies. It doesn't sound like it's going to happen next year, but it is probably going to happen the year after that as far as VAR is concerned. The other thing that I'm really excited about is the more that computers and the more that AI is driving kind of how we look at data and analytics and sports. Where does that fit into soccer? I don't see it going all the way to the extreme where baseball has, where every decision, it almost sounds like is being made by the number, by what the computers are crunching out and telling you. But I think you are foolish to avoid that kind of stuff and try to ruin that traditional scouting department and only using the eyeball test, especially at our level. I can't afford at this point in time to hire a coaching staff or a scouting staff to send all across the world to look at players in South America, to look at players in Europe and all these different places. So there are two or three companies that are kind of leading data analytics in soccer and how we look at it. And one of them is called Drib Lab. So we will be the first USL championship club to be using Drib Lab and we will use that in a couple of different ways. One, we will use it to profile players that we'd like to bring in. So let's say there's a midfielder that's been on the roster for two years that we really like, but we know he's leaving next year. We can tell Drib Lab, hey, find us five players that fit his play style that have played similarly in the last two, three years and we can get very specific. We can say he has to be under 27, he has to have played so many minutes, he has to have scored this many goals. Like we can set all the parameters and within 24 to 48 hours they're sending us full on scouting reports with all that information we've asked for. That is not something that you could do quickly five, ten years ago. So to be on the forefront with that with Drib Lab, this company has worked with Realm, that Madrid, with Manchester United, with clubs in Major League Soccer, it's going to open up a whole nother avenue of how we adjust players. I said one of them was that incoming players. The other way we can use it is outgoing players. I talked about that academy kid who's going to sign a pro contract. How do we evaluate what he's worth if we're looking to sell him in a year or two years? Well, with Driv Lab, we can take all the data that we've got from him from let's say he starts playing significant playing time next year and start building models of who similar players are and what their contracts are that are currently around the world. So that when we go to ask for a fee from another club if they want to buy him. We're coming from a place that's grounded in statistical information, so huge, huge grab for us to be the first. And what I hope is, is that other clubs in the USL see the success and then want to join Driblab as well. Is it a fail safe? Does it mean you're not going to make a miss on a player? Absolutely not. But we can decrease the amount of errors that we make by accessing this kind of information and marry that with.

Seasoned talent like Landon Donovan, who's been there before and has a well trained eye. You know, that two together I think looks pretty good. And obviously we're seeing the fruits of it this season in how well the team is doing, which is pretty incredible to be watching them do. Well, I can't say when this is going to go live, so I don't know what the status of our team is at that exact moment, but we know all season season we've been really proud of just how well they've been doing in that regard. One thing to highlight around there's not a good way to transition to the taco question, but I'll have to ask it. You say you go into the community and you pick the cities, right. To go into Escondido, El Cajon and people have their favorites of tacos. They also have ways that they come together and have tacos. You have to have the same. Do you have a favorite taco spot or multiple?

Yeah, I'm going to be a little bit of a homer because I'm going to stay inside my bubble here in Point Loma, but by Point Loma High School, which is relatively close, where I'm at is Ortiz's taco shop. They've been around for a long, long time. And I forget at one time they had like the number three California burrito in San Diego. So I know that's not a taco, but everything they make there is killer and it's a local spot that I'm probably in once a week, so I have to give it a little shout out for sure.

No, we love that. And I was going to ask like what's the smart order there? It sounds like it might be the California burrito.

So yeah, absolutely. You know your question. I if you want to talk food, we need another hour. Because if you had said to me, Andrew, what's the best fish taco? Now the question changes or the answer changes. Now we're talking about Mitch's, we're talking about blue water. So I think it depends on also what the protein inside is going to be will dictate where I'm headed for sure.

There's no wrong answer here. And there's the right taco for the right hour of the day, right? There's breakfast tacos, there's after midnight tacos, which have a whole different thing.

Can we say that for a second? Why hasn't San Diego or California for that matter figured out the breakfast taco the way Texas has?

I know. Why is Austin owning that? They don't deserve that.

Egg, hot sauce, cheese. Like it's so good.

I know, I know. We got to do that. Well, then next time we'll make sure we ask your favorite breakfast taco spot so that we're spread the gospel to find those places. Ortiz's has not been mentioned, by the way, on the podcast in 250 episodes, so we are adding it to the taco database, which we have. We're about to put out a visualization to show how many times people have been mentioned. There's been one that's been mentioned by far more than any of the other ones and that's okay. But Ortiz, that's Andrew's final answer. I love that. Well, Andrew, it's been a real pleasure to be able to sit down, tell a bit of the loyal story, but also your story alongside it because it's the humans behind the brands that make organizations happen and run. And so we're all super proud to be supporting and rooting for our team here. So thanks for making it happen and helping join on the podcast here.

It's been a pleasure. I hope to do it again.

Cheers. Thanks. Thanks for tuning in to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. You can find all of our episodes on freshbroodtech.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also, follow Fresh Food tech on all.

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