Meet Nick Melvin | Chef/partner

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

Hi Nick, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
We started Poco Loco at the start of the Panademic honestly out of a personal need that I had to keep cooking for people. After I had furloughed myself from Fox Bros as the culinary director so that I could help with our kids I started to fall into a depression because for the first time in over 20 years I wasn’t cooking in the restaurant. So we decided to work on a flour tortilla recipe that we liked and started our first Saturday service out of our driveway selling 25 burritos

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My name is Nick Melvin and I’m a native of Louisiana! I’ve been in the Atlanta scene for going on 15+ years now. Growing up I was cooking at my mother side from as early as I can remember. It was here that I first learned the power that food has and how critical it really is in forming memories and positive interactions. I started a pickle company with my father in law around 10 years ago called Doux South. Really when we started this we just wanted to see if folks would really even be interested in our pickles but after starting out at the East Atlanta Farmers Market we found r ourselves very fortunate to find a group of amazing folks that loves how we treated each vegetable uniquely when making a brine to match their own individual characteristics. Because of our amazing customers we were able to take our little pickle company from a shared kitchen to having our own production company that now makes pickes not just for small markets but also for Amazon and Whole Foods

After helping to create Doux South I opened up a Restaurant/Music Venu in O4W. It was here that I finally had to face my demons that I had created and carried with me throughout my career and acknowledge that I was an alcoholic. A month after opening, my amazing wife, checked me in to a rehabilitation facility in North GA. It was here that I was able to start to create the tools that I would need to lead a sober life However once returning to work after Rehab I continued to work the 80+ hour weeks and was still not happy and finding myself a bit of a grouch, to be kind. I then decided that it was time to actually step back from being a
Chef in the “traditional” sense and to remove myself from the restaurant that I had helped create.
Very fortunate for me that The Fox Bros had just a position for me where I could come in, assist w their new saisage program and help with some Catering SOPa. The Bros were amazing and accepted me quickly as a part of the family. However I found that my natural habit to say yes and to go out and take on more things than I had initially planned on rose again and I quickly found myself as the Culinary Director. I learned so much in this position and just the shear volume that Fox Bros is able to accomplish all the while still along everything fresh daily is a feat alone.
Then Covid dropped, and like most all companies we had to furlough most of our staff and go down to a skeleton crew. Personally my wife and I had to make a decision as to who would
“Teach” our two boys school. After so many years of Kristen letting me
Put my career ambitions first it was time that I took a step back so that she could
Continue and shine in her career and I would play Mr Mom
This was pretty much 1000% harder than I ever imagined. And after a while I actually found myself in a depression for once in my life I wasn’t a chef. Or someone that wasn’t working to be a chef, or an owner or a lead cook..just a dad. And I loved it but I felt lost. So I did what was a release for myself and filled my “cup”….I cooked. And I gave it away and I cooked more…and I gave more away, lol. Finally a neighbor was like you should really just try selling something out of your driveway. Very hesitant but after many conversations we landed on Breakfast burritos. I had cooked with Latinos for most of my cooking Career, not at Mexican restaurants but in the back, making family meals, going to their houses on Sundays for the feast and I had
Fallen in love w the Mexican culture and
Like my addictive personality does, I became obsessed and read every book, YouTube video I could on how to
Cook like these amazing folks I was around day in and day out., soaking up everything…even to today. So we worked on a tortilla recipe that we liked and started selling breakfast burritos out of our house on Saturday’s. The first Saturday we sold 28
Burritos and the last day before we moved into our College Ave location we sold over 250. Now we make and sell around 2,000 burritos, fresh and frozen,
Thursday-Saturday.
What we were able to do w Poco is to create those borders for myself that I finally learned I need to seperate my professional life from my personal life. And because of the amazing support of our guests/family we are able to all have a great life balance, all the while
paying our bills, supporting our family and having time to rest by giving several weeks a year off w paid leave for mental
Health breaks. Poco Loco has been so special and continues to be an honest place that just wants to make everyone’s day just a little brighter

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Well if they were here for a week here are a couple of things we would definitely seek out..

Restaurants:
Ticonderoga Club
Little Bear
B Side Bakery
The Daily
Talat Market
Gigis
Chicago Super Market
Lan Zhous Dumplings
El Rey Tacos
Homegrown
Fox Bros

Sites/shopping:
Krog Street
Belt Line (not on the weekend)
Chatahoochie Hike
Civil Rights Trail
Ponce City Market
Dolls Head Trail
Freedom Park Farmers Market

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Poco loco is the definition of community support. From the very start..even before we started making burritos we had so many friends in the community offering us a leg up to get started. From Pine street Market Butcher shop giving us bacon to work with to a local spice company, Beautiful Briny Sea, giving us dried Chiles and spices. From day one it’s been about the people, our community and not taking ourselves too seriously. Then when we moved into our brick and mortar the neighborhood of Kirkwood just embraced us w open arms and took us in as one of the neighborhood.

Website: Pocolocoatl@gmail.com

Instagram: Pocolocoatl

Facebook: Poco Loco ATL

Image Credits
Nick Melvin