The small town of Peñasco, New Mexico, doesn’t offer any chain restaurants to stop in for a meal. But what it does offer is a variety of local cuisine. If you are looking for a quick bite to eat on your drive through the mountains, you might try to search for El Ya Merito. It is a small restaurant that specializes in burgers, burritos, and fries.

Michael Visarraga is the newest owner of El Ya Merito. His grandfather started the business in 1991, and it has been in the family ever since. His family closed the restaurant for a few years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When Michael moved back to Peñasco after serving in the Marine Corps, he helped his father reopen the restaurant.

“I’m a new generation that is trying to come in and contribute,” said Visarraga. “I just took over last year so I’m still kind of learning the ropes and learning how to become a business owner as well.”

When Visarraga took over the business, he did not realize he would need to purchase a new kitchen hood with fire suppression built in to comply with fire codes. He also noticed the kitchen offered limited space to put together customer orders.

“We didn’t have a prep table, so before we were just doing everything through a little condiment box,” said Visarraga. “If we got big orders, they would take forever to come out because our grill was too small.”

Luckily for Visarraga, the local nonprofit MAS Comunidad wanted to help local businesses. MAS Comunidad purchased a hood with fire suppression, a food preparation table, refrigeration, and a larger grill using a USDA Rural Development Rural Business Development Grant.

“We make our burgers fresh and [before] it would take about 20 minutes to pull out an order,” shared Visarraga. “Now it takes 10 because we have more on the grill, more prep space, and everything is already prepared. Before we would prepare on the spot, and now we prepare ahead of time. Our prep table does that for us because it is refrigerated, so it has everything cut, prepped, and organized.”

With the weather warming up, Michael says he expects more customers, especially during lunch and dinner. With more customers and more income, he shared he hopes to hire some employees to help out as well.

“I’m really grateful for this grant. It really made a big difference and I’m excited for the summer.”

To learn more about Rural Development grants visit the programs page. Visit the MAS Comunidad website to learn more about what they do. For more photos from this story visit the Rural Development Flickr page.