Daughter of owners takes over Las Palmas Restaurant
Veronica Sanchez remembers when Downtown Hollister was a hub of
activity, with active storefronts and foot traffic. She recalls
being a young girl and walking from her family’s Fourth Street
apartment to San Benito Street and seeing a number of people
shopping or dining.
Daughter of owners takes over Las Palmas Restaurant
Veronica Sanchez remembers when Downtown Hollister was a hub of activity, with active storefronts and foot traffic. She recalls being a young girl and walking from her family’s Fourth Street apartment to San Benito Street and seeing a number of people shopping or dining.
“You don’t see that as much anymore,” she said a bit ruefully, as she sat at one of the 11 tables in the main dining room of Las Palmas restaurant near the corner of San Benito and Fifth streets. But she hopes to help reverse that trend and return some vibrancy to the area.
Sanchez, 28, recently took over day-to-day operations of Las Palmas, a Mexican food restaurant that her family has owned since 1986.
When her father, Luis, was diagnosed with cancer, he and his wife, Maria, decided to sell the business to allow Luis the opportunity to travel. Sanchez, who had worked the past nine-and-a-half years for Enterprise Rent-A-Car, most recently as a branch manager, couldn’t bear to see the restaurant be sold – so she stepped in. Her father instead sold some property and houses in Mexico and transferred ownership to Sanchez.
“I’m up for a challenge,” said Sanchez, who bussed tables at Las Palmas when she was too young to waitress or wash dishes like her five siblings. “I see how hard my parents work. It was really hard for all of us, but when we were getting close to selling and started getting offers, we got sad. It was almost depressing because our entire lives have been spent in the restaurant business. The thought of not being able to come here to work was awkward.”
So Sanchez told her parents that she wanted to take over the business.
“My background is in business and marketing as well as interior design,” she said. “I know what appeals to people, so I wanted to completely redo the restaurant.”
For the past six months, Sanchez has been using her own money to gradually remake the 3,260-square-foot restaurant.
With her background in art and design and a love of Mexican resort destinations such as Cancun and Cabo San Lucas, she drew inspiration from the colors and vibe of these vacation spots. The formerly straight beams in the center of Las Palmas were changed to arches and painted salsa red. One wall was painted bright yellow because “it makes [the wall] feel fun,” Sanchez said.
New wall decorations have gone up and a collage of bull fighting posters that her father brought from Mexico has been framed with wooden planks to add a Spanish feel to the restaurant.
A mural on the north wall was also framed and the painted words “Esta Es Su Casa” (This is your house) above the entrance to the kitchen were left untouched. Two palm trees that used to be in pots inside the restaurant now sit on the sidewalk outside the eatery, befitting its name “Las Palmas,” (The Palms).
Sanchez said a new sign and logo will soon adorn the front windows and a new bar has already been built.
It’s not just about maintaining the family legacy, Sanchez said. It’s about revitalizing downtown.
“I really want to get the nightlife going here in Hollister,” she said. “I really want to push downtown as a destination. My age group really needs somewhere to go out at night.”
Sanchez envisions Hollister offering some of the draws similar to other Central Coast downtown areas. In Old Town Salinas, for example, she and her friends “can just sit in chairs outside and drink coffee,” she said. “We also go out to Monterey because there are so many places that if you don’t like one you can just jump around to another. That’s sort of what we need to bring here to Hollister. If we can just get downtown going…”
As a veteran of the restaurant business, Sanchez is not expecting a quick turnaround, but she is optimistic.
“I know I may not be busy for the first couple of weeks or months, but as long as people know that there is something going on, things will be OK,” she said. “Hollister is still a small town and people have the mentality that they don’t want to run into people that they know or that there’s nothing going on downtown. If you drive down the street, there are all these vacant buildings, which is really sad. I remember when all those were open.”
With the upcoming completion of the Hwy. 25 bypass designed to relieve some of the congestion on San Benito Street, Sanchez said things are looking up.
“The city has really good plans right now,” she said. “If they accept those plans and do them in stages, I think that’ll be amazing. The more business in downtown the busier downtown will be.”
Sanchez has plans to install a dance floor in Las Palmas by the end of the month.
“We’re going to really focus on salsa and meringue music and dancing, and there will also be some Top 40 being played by a deejay,” she said, adding that she envisions transitioning Las Palmas from a restaurant to more of a club feel after 9:30 p.m. on Fridays and weekends. She also plans to offer a taco bar or nacho stations to feed guests who are there to dance, mingle, or enjoy a drink.
The Las Palmas menu, which has featured a mixture of American and Mexican dishes, has also been undergoing some changes with the addition of a “drenched burrito,” topped with mild red or green sauce and cheese, and the Jalisco Plate, which offers diners a choice of a burrito, sope, enchilada, taco, quesadilla, flauta or chile relleno, along with rice and beans. Old favorites remain, such as chorizo for breakfast and Camarones a la Diabla (shrimp sauteed in butter, wine, lemon and spicy chipotle sauce) for dinner.
Asked why people should consider dining at Las Palmas, Sanchez said, “People will get the feel that it’s a family-run business. We serve good, authentic food. Everything is fresh; nothing is frozen.”
For more information on Las Palmas, visit www.laspalmashollister.com or call 636-4636.
