CONWAY — Over the past year, Tacos 4 Life, a chain has donated 5 million more meals through its nonprofit partner Feed My Starving Children, to 30 million total.
The Conway-based restaurant business, which has outposts in Northwest and Central Arkansas, Texarkana, Jonesboro and six other states, wants to eventually have enough of a presence and sales to fund 1 million meals a day.
“Every three restaurants provide a million meals a year,” said founder Austin Samuelson in an interview. “That’s tangible.”
Samuelson founded the brand with his wife, Ashton, nine years ago, having been inspired by World Vision International’s humanitarian mission and the scale of childhood starvation worldwide.
“I wanted to be in the business world, and she did as well,” he said in an interview. “We didn’t feel called to the nonprofit segment — not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not the way we’re wired.”
Samuelson claimed divine inspiration for opening a restaurant that would provide shoes akin to the way Toms Shoes once donated a pair of footwear one-for-one with its retail sales.
He noted the emphasis on children who are on the brink of starvation, noting the continuum of hunger that manifests around the world. Feed My Starving Children, based in suburban Minneapolis, has received good marks by charity auditors.
“It’s no different than the cost of the tortilla on the taco, which is the way we treat it,” Samuelson said. “If you look at our income statement, it’s located in our cost of goods.”
The restaurant industry runs on very tight margins. Samuelson said the business pays for its charitable giving through engaging customers through limited time offers, a rewards program and a “good consistent product that’s crave-able.” He also credits his employees with understanding the importance of productivity. (Tacos 4 Life pays above the minimum wage, and full-time workers can opt into company health insurance.)
Samuelson said the restaurant was profitable at its launch. All 11 Arkansas outposts are corporate-owned, alongside 14 franchises beyond state lines. Two licensed operations with Aramark and Sodexo are set to open soon at Ouachita Baptist and Southern Arkansas universities.
Access to sufficient capital to open a mission-oriented business is, of course, a privilege. The Samuelsons’ first restaurant brand failed, and several banks declined to loan money to them for Tacos 4 Life. They built out the first, on Oak Street in Conway, by themselves, and they found an accommodating landlord. They crowdfunded through the website Indigogo; early investors’ names are on the restaurant wall, buttressing investments by Samuelson’s father and two other individuals. Talent came in the form of restaurant veterans on the corporate team and managers who have grown into their roles over time.
Franchisees can be wary about the 4% of the top line that goes to Feed My Starving Children. But Samuelson said that managers can do both philanthropic good and make money, and feel good about their jobs.
Food aid to desperately poor countries has long been an item of debate among economists, the concern being that a supply of free food decreases prices for local farmers trying to make a living in already-tough circumstances. Feed My Starving Children distributes meal pouches with Arkansas rice alongside soy protein, dehydrated vegetables and vitamins, but the nonprofit has experimented with distributing protein and vitamin mix alone to be mixed with local grain staples.
Samuelson, for his part, would like the global situation to change so that there are no longer starving children, so that Tacos 4 Life could instead help provide supplemental food aid.
As for the namesake food, Samuelson explained that he and his wife love Mexican food and were additionally inspired by tacos’ quality as an improvisational canvass.
“The fun thing about tacos is that you can honor the heritage of them but then you can also take off and [riff],” he said. “Our special right now is Buffalo chicken with fried pickles on it; that’s a nod to being in the South.”
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