Meet Imelda Diez-tipa

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Imelda Diez-tipa. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Imelda below.

Hi Imelda, thank you for being such a positive, uplifting person. We’ve noticed that so many of the successful folks we’ve had the good fortune of connecting with have high levels of optimism and so we’d love to hear about your optimism and where you think it comes from.

As a small business owner, my optimism comes from my passion for sharing my cultural heritage and my pride in showing Peru to the world through this “little window” like my restaurant.
Opening Señor Carbón —Peruvian Cuisine was one of our biggest dreams. We have the resilience to overcome challenges and obstacles and celebrate our achievements with loyal customers.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

My name is Imelda Diez-Tipa, and I’m the founder and owner of Señor Carbón Restaurant which opened its doors to the community in Dec 2021, located at 625 1st Ave, Seattle in Pioneer Square, this Peruvian Cuisine restaurant offers traditional Peruvian dishes with a specialty of Nikkei Cuisine (sushi rolls). I am the brain behind the scenes, I have a bachelor’s degree in hospitality administration, and I take care of everything from all administrative and corporate duties to all you see on social media, a full-time mother of 3 beautiful children who manage to do house chores and motherhood while she remotely works in her daily business tasks. My background is mostly in customer service, so I always like to say that customers may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel so whenever I see an opportunity to create a “wow” moment, I act on it!

My business partner and co-owner of Señor Carbón Restaurant, in my opinion, the most talented Chef I know, is Chef Joe Tuesta is the heart and the soul of Señor Carbón’s kitchen, he is very passionate about Peruvian food and shows his amazing skills every day in service. You will see him all the time hands-on, not only in the kitchen but also greeting customers and serving tables. Chef Joe has over 17 years of experience serving Peruvian food.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

– Entrepreneurial spirit, I will say believe in your dream and work hard to make it possible; we had so many people pushing us to leave this dream and just focus our attention on something else, so we do not lose the little capital that we had to start. We opened Señor Carbón Restaurant with $4.72 in our bank account, believing in a successful opening, and it was. Believe in your capacity to make things possible working on them every day.

– knowledge; to us, is a powerful skill in whatever you are doing. Learning how to utilize digital marketing, how to use multiple systems, and understanding that if our restaurant gets more customers, we need to be up to the standards. Creating new dishes, being active on social media, and collaborating with multiple organizations just to make us visible to the world. Knowledge of what you are offering so you can easily explain to your customers.

– Adaptability; embracing change – we needed to create different ways to get customers during the pandemic, we opened in the middle of this situation, so it was very challenging but also an opportunity for us to adapt, innovate, and improve our business idea to what we were facing.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

We are currently facing inflation, paying mostly taxes, rent, and payroll from all our gross sales. Currently entering the slowest time of the year, so having customers supporting us by ordering to go on dine-in will be a huge help!

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Food photos taken by Simon Diez Photography, Marysville – WA

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