Meet Mayra Peralta | Founder and Co-Owner of Calaveritas

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mayra Peralta and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mayra, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
The main ethos behind Calaveritas is veganism. We keep the traditions and the animals alive, while still serving authentic food. We exist because Atlanta needs more authentic Mexican food, and more vegan Mexican food. But how we got started was out of necessity. The pandemic had just started and everything was shut down, including my place of employment which was a restaurant. I had been selling vegan tamales at pop up shops here and there since 2019, but not very consistently. All of a sudden, I needed a way to make money to help pay rent, but I luckily already had a lot of the equipment to run a pop up. Without thinking too much about it, my sister Sandra and I and my friend Crystal (who loves to cook vegan food) all came together to sell pick up orders at one of the only open markets in Atlanta: the ATL Food Truck Park on Howell Mill. We started there with tamales but as things got a little busier, we saw that tacos were faster and more recognizable, and that’s when it really took off. At that time, it was so rare to find authentic vegan tacos anywhere in Atlanta, except for a few pop up vendors.

What should our readers know about your business?
What makes us proud and excited is seeing how far we’ve come with no experience. My sister and I transitioned from being waitresses to business owners, and we have lots and lots of support from our community in a way that we never imagined. Building this has taught us so much about our own strength, creativity, and willpower through the many different challenges we’ve overcome. We’ve learned how vital planning and preparedness is with EVERYTHING, and how those two concepts can make or break you. As much as you want to just keep marching ahead without looking back, we’ve learned how rest and reflection can be the difference in creating true success. We are building a beautiful business to showcase how beautiful vegan Mexican food can be.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
We work so much that we hardly have time to go out, but when we do we love being in nature so here are our favorite spots not too far from Atlanta!

– Stone Mountain Park
– Arabia Mountain
– Sweetwater Creek State Park
– Jones Bridge Park
– Favorite vegan spots to eat: Dulce Vegan in Kirkwood, The Works has plenty of awesome food spots (shoutout to Hippie Hibachi), Vegreen (authentic Asian fusion) in Duluth and Tassili’s Raw Reality on the West End are our favorites!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
All of the immigrants in this country deserve love and recognition for all that they go through. We are immigrants ourselves and we’ve seen first hand many generations of people from all over the world come to this country to make a difference for themselves or their families. Our parents were our first example of people who left behind everything to give us a better chance. There’s no guarantee that things will work out, that your family will enjoy or adapt to their new surroundings or that you’ll ever see some of the people you left behind. In every immigrant’s story there are communities who stayed, for better or for worse. You never forget those people or their love, and you never really shake the feeling of guilt for leaving. With all that weighing on you, there is a crazy amount of pressure to make all that effort and leaving all that behind feel validated. You work so hard and try so hard to build and if you’re lucky, you have something beautiful to show for it. We have seen so much of that beauty, and it inspires us everyday. We hope to inspire others with our own story some day. We also want to Shoutout to our beautiful customers who come and support us every week, this wouldn’t exist without you!

Website: taqueriavegana.com

Instagram: @calaveritasatl

Facebook: @calaveritasatl

Image Credits
Jonathan Aguirre