From left to right: Jim, Juan, Carrie, Kelly, Everardo, Gloria, and Moises, staff at Mimmo’s.
Ximello Sanchez, MImmo’s
One sign of an entrepreneurial dreamer is how much they care about the details. Take the gluten-free mozzarella sticks at a small pizza place in Tom’s River, New Jersey. They are labeled, crunchy, chewy and warm in the right proportions – maybe most important, the restaurant takes pains to make sure they aren’t cross-contaminated with gluten.
Moises Ximello Sanchez is the detail-oriented co-owner of Mimmo’s, in Tom’s River. He and his business partner, Everardo Flores, bought the restaurant a year-and-a-half ago from its founder Dominic Cartigliolia. It had long been known for the breadth of the gluten-free options on its menu. The market for gluten-free food is exploding, as the incidence of celiac disease rises (it’s up by 7.5% annually in the Western World), and more people go gluten-free for other reasons, including sensitivities. Just because something is labelled “gluten-free” doesn’t make it truly gluten-free. Symptoms of celiac disease can be triggered by as little as 50mg of gluten. To put that into perspective, the average person consumes over 10 g. This means that preventing cross-contamination is an important job of any restaurant that labels itself “gluten-free friendly”.
Ximello Sanchez has been focusing on building trust with his customer base. After a dip in revenue, which is expected when a business changes hands, he said the restaurant is now almost back up to the levels it was when he and his partner bought it. Gluten-free dining makes up about 40% of the revenue.
A Dreamer’s Journey
Luckily, he’s practiced in doing hard things: His journey toward entrepreneurship actually started back when he was 15, when he arrived in the United States from Mexico to join his siblings and became a Dreamer – an immigrant who arrived as a minor. Currently protected, Dreamers who already have the status face an uncertain future as the Trump Administration tries to end efforts to give them a legal pathway.
After Ximello Sanchez moved to the United States from Mexico, he had to first learn English, while he started working in the restaurant business. Then, he received a GED, and applied to school at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. Rowan is known for its supportive polices for immigrant students and people who are also working while in school.
Ximello Sanchez aspired to become a doctor. He put himself through college at Rowan University, studying biochemistry, with a minor in biosciences – research fields that would later come in handy when he was designing practices at Mimmos to minimize cross-contamination.
He graduated, but his status kept him from being able to get the loan he needed for medical school. “The fact that I have to renew my permit every two years makes everything I do uncertain. I had [to] let go [of] many opportunities in my life such as that of becoming a doctor,” he said. “But, thanks to being a Dreamer, I have found ways to help the community and obtain a higher education. This has helped me a lot as an entrepreneur… in my township.”
He also began working as a firefighter at Tom’s River Fire Co. 2. He had enough saved up to go into business, and his jobs in the restaurant business had made that an appealing option. If he could turn the restaurant into a success, he thought, he would be able to generate an income and carve out enough time to study to become a nurse practitioner.
By this point, Ximello Sanchez had worked in the restaurant industry for 15 years. Working as a host and server at a restaurant called Il Giardinello in Tom’s River gave Ximello Sanchez a unique sensitivity to customers’ allergies and accommodations.
“I saw reviews of customers getting sick because of the food,” says Ximello Sanchez. He knew he had to do better. In Italian restaurants especially, one of the biggest obstacles to having gluten-free food is preventing cross-contamination.
Ximello Sanchez credits his time working in a lab with his deep understanding of cross contamination. In the lab, it is vital to prevent unintentional particulates of one substance from finding their way into another substance. Such attention to detail is normalized in a scientific setting – using extreme caution when transferring substances from surface to surface is standard practice. In the kitchen, it’s a little different. “In real life, cross contamination is everywhere.” Ximello Sanchez points out.
When an opportunity cropped up in an already established “gluten-free spot,” Ximello Sanchez and his business partner, Everardo Flores, bought the restaurant with the same determination to stick to what made the restaurant unique – its wide-variety of gluten-free options. “We have rice flour, we have gluten free breadcrumbs, we have gluten-free gnocchi… you wouldn’t believe how much you could make with those ingredients.” says Ximello Sanchez.
However, at the beginning, customers doubted whether the change in ownership would mean a change in dedication to the gluten-free food that made Mimmo’s a local legend. Ximello Sanchez says the turning point was when a member of an Ocean County gluten-free Facebook page stopped by. Their later post detailed the incredible dedication that the new owners of Mimmo’s had to accommodating its gluten-free guests.
Every morning, the two owners do all the prep work, to ensure that it is done correctly and with no possible gluten interference. The gluten-free products are stored in a separate fridge, fried in a separate fryer, and always handled with gloves. Gluten-free pizzas are made with a frozen crust, using separate sauce and cheese. Even the regular, gluten pizzas are tossed with rice flour, to avoid wheat flour contaminating the surfaces in the kitchen.
“I couldn’t look [a customer] in the face and tell them their meal is gluten-free, when I’m not totally sure that it is.” Ximello Sanchez says.
In the meantime, Ximello Sanchez is starting school at Ocean County College in the spring, and continues to work with the Tom’s River Fire Co., as well as in the restaurant six days a week. When I sat down with him, he assured me he also has time to work out and do things for himself. I asked him about his ambition and what enables him to hold down all of his jobs. “It’s who I am,” he said. ”I feel like I was made for this.”
Dining and Cooking