Papillion Interview: Papillion Taco Guy – Scott Nedved

PapillionBusinesses.com Interview with “The Papillion Taco Guy”, Scott Nedved

A lot has happened since we talked last. So please tell us about different things, any changes and your menu line up to now.

So, for right now, we will continue to run specials. There are things that I think we  will eventually just add to the menu. That will probably come as we expand a little bit more, but right now they will just be regular items that we rotate. For instance, the loaded nachos, people love them. They sell really well. We’ll probably just make them a menu item and we’ll continue to work it in there. Our street corn or Smokies, [we’ll] probably eventually add that to the menu. Some of these will be regular ones that we bring back seasonally. The chili and cornbread, we will bring that back every winter. We will probably bring out the Shrimp Po’ Boy probably every year for Lent. We’ll have some regular ones that will come back seasonally, and we’ll eventually add to the menu with that.

 

Shrimp Po’ Boy

This year, I think we’d like to play around with our breakfast a little bit more. So, we kind of started our breakfast going live last year. And as weather got cooler, it wasn’t taking off real hard and [does] this makes sense to bring somebody in here super early just to do extra stuff to set up and take down? As it was just starting to take off and it wasn’t . . . it was kind of inconsistent. I do the work and I’ve been walking around downtown Papillion and it was eight degrees outside in January, right? So there wasn’t much point to push into it or force it over the winter. But going into the spring, we want to bring that back, revamp it a little bit. Make it more consistent, depending on how it goes. Hopefully, I’d like to make [it] a thing. You know, we could be open for breakfast every day.

That being said, I’m working with Heavenly Waffles. So, we might bring in some new line items. He came in  and we made a bunch of waffles. They’re delicious. I really love what he’s got going on there and the product line.

We can have some fun too. Like we made a we made a chicken waffle taco. We used the waffle as a taco shell. That was delicious. It was a lot of fun. He’s got all sorts of flavors. We made one [where] we threw pico in the waffle. It was a savory waffle. It was delicious.

He’s a talented chef, so he’s got a lot of great ideas. So, it’s fun and he’s like me. He likes to play around in the kitchen. Right? So we’re in here and he’s like, “What do you have, let’s just start looking through the shelves for the spices we have. Let’s just make some different stuff.” Right? So, with being able to do that and play around with it a little bit. You know, being able to partner with them. We’re blessed that he’s from Omaha and we can even have a little bit more of a connection with them. Right? So he’s selling these products all over, right? But him being from Omaha, gives us a chance to maybe bounce some ideas back and forth a little more frequently and say, “Come on, what do you think about this? Let’s try some different stuff.” So we’ll work that in and that’ll be kind of a fun thing that we’ll do.

Probably, probably we’re going start in March kind of start making steps and getting the product in and then sometime in March or April, we’ll start rolling out some menu items like that. We will probably start off similar to how we’re doing some specials and we’ll eventually work it on to a regular breakfast menu.

I’ve had his waffles before. Pretty amazing. Of course, the sweet was great but the savories -those were my favorites.

So my wife [is] from South Africa right, and they’re they always think it’s funny about Americans is you guys eat cake for breakfast, right, and they are thinking pancakes, waffles. But when you go to South Africa, we would go out to eat and they’ve got a chain that reminds me of almost like Buffalo Wild Wings style plays, right? But it’s ribs and stuff. And you’ll go out there in the dessert menu, they have waffles and they’ll give you ice cream and Nutella and all that type of stuff. And so, it’s more of a dessert. They use it differently than we do. And so I think it’s kind of fun to play with that.

We’re not really sticking on theme here with anything in our food line. We’re mixing a lot of different genres, wanting to kind of play around a lot with it. So there’s no reason why we can’t do that with waffles.

We do smoked meats, but we are not barbecue, but we do have some traditional flavors. Right. We’re not Thai, but we use sweet chili. Right. We’re not South African, but our hot sauce is based off the South African hot pepper. Right. So we’re kind of blending it all.

We did not intend to be this melting pot genres in food. It just kind of what happened and just kind of leaned into it and why not? We made something that works.

What have you learned over this time that might be helpful to other business owners or people starting out.

So, I came from a restaurant background. I learned a little bit to trust, right. So, we’re going into the winter. [Winter] is not when people go out to eat as often when there’s 14 and snow and snow on the ground. So, I use this time to fine tune.

I’ve got DoorDash, Uber Eats, and GrubHub – just fine tuning – to figure out how to get that, you know, get that menu adjusted. Got to. We use [this time] as our, “Hey, let’s really train, right ?” I want to have more time now. Now I got time where I can spend some time for systems and procedures and getting us so that everything’s right.

We use this time for fixing things like our trailer. And we’re taking advantage of the time that we know basically planning for the future. Use the time to remodel the trailer. Use the time to figure it out. Use the time to train employees. Employees who had never smoked meat before, but now I’m going to need them to  smoke some meat, so I told him. I said listen, “You’re going to screw it up.” I needed them to go and figure it out and make mistakes and ask questions and figure out what you don’t know now. So, that is in July [and] August when we need the meat, you are ok,  doing right. I need you guys to practice. It’s hard for me to say that they’re not right or not just do the next thing. But I need  [to know] they are good make the pico or making the sour cream and doing all the stuff.

I just need to be in the habit faster and they are comfortable doing it. It’s more ready to advance. I think really, for us, it’s just us being calm, use the time when you know it’s going to be slow, plan ahead for that and be prepared for when it is busy.

Thank you. That is good advice-the repeatable processes, how you use your time when it’s slow and how that creates an opportunity for other things.

Try the tacos for yourself at:
The Papillion Taco Guy
110 N. Washington St.
Papillion, NE 68046
402-201-8433

Previous Papillion Taco Guy Stories:

New Papillion Business: The Papillion Taco Guy, 7 August 2023
https://papillionbusinesses.com/blog/new-papillion-business-the-papillion-taco-guy

Papillion Food: The Papillion Taco Guy at First City Plaza,  
https://papillionbusinesses.com/blog/papillion-food-the-papillion-taco-guy-at-first-city-plaza

 

Sarpy County Museum Interview: Executive Director, Ben Justman, Part Three

Papillion Businesses Interview with Sarpy County Museum’s Executive Director, Ben Justman, Part Three

Image of Ben Justman, Executive Director of the Sarpy County Museum

I am curious about how all the cities started out in Sarpy County.

High level overview- let’s start the beginning.

-Bellevue

So, Bellevue gets its start with what’s behind me as really the gateway to the west. It’s a fur trading post. There’s a ferry here. It’s all operated by Peter Sarpy. And in 1854, The Kansas Nebraska Act takes place. It allows for settlement across the Missouri River; Kansas and Nebraska. And so, people start coming here and some of them pass through on their way to California or elsewhere eventually, but many settled here and so Bellevue gets it start really out of that.

In the early days, Bellevue was hopeful and expected to be the site of the transcontinental railroad crossing – Council Bluffs across Missouri. And it was politicking that went on. Nothing new in the years before the Civil War. That really didn’t strike out for Bellevue. Bellevue also hoped to be the seat of the territorial capital for the Nebraska territory. Both ultimately went to a very young town to the north, which today is Omaha.

So, Bellevue, even though [for a] couple years seemed very prosperous. There was a lot of development here. It really started to fade away. And so, if it had not been for, by the 1880s, a four year institution, Bellevue College, that was established that brought young people here, [to] put some economic development into the community, and then, in the 1890s, the establishment of Fort Crook, which today became Offutt Air Force Base, Bellevue probably would have become a ghost town. But it didn’t, and has had a number of successes obviously along the way here. It’s the oldest continuous settlement in Nebraska. So, that’s Bellevue’s  origin story in a nutshell.

-Papillion

The next would be a Papillion. Papillion was established in 1870. There were a number of towns similar to Papillion that were established and became ghost towns. Papillion succeeded for two reasons. One, they had a mill which drew farmers into town and that mill was only going to be successful so long as they had a railroad connection. This is a time where if you don’t have a railroad line, you’re pretty much done as a community. And so, the early residents of Papillion appealed to Union Pacific and put some financial skin in the game and paid them to ensure that their town was not just going to become another ghost town, that it was financially viable. And so Union Pacific built a line through the town and from there, Papillion has grown especially over the last 50 years, where it’s become really an active growing community.

A big boon for Papillion and it’s early days, as I said it was established in 1870, [in] 1875 it becomes the county seat for Sarpy County. So, that really is a financial and political boon for Papillion. Bellevue had been shrinking at this point. And so having the county seat was really a major feather in its cap to ensure that Papillion was going to be around for the foreseeable future.

Is it the story about fur trader that we hear for naming Papillion, is that true?

There’s a lot of unknowns. There has been some research done recently by an academic scholar who did look into it and from what I can recall, there were French fur traders who named the creek, the Papillion Creek. And from there because the town was established, just off the creek, took that that name.

-Gretna

Gretna gets its start also tied to the railroad. Burlington built towns along the railroad. There were a couple not as successful towns near Gretna, largely consisting of Irish immigrants or some Dutch immigrants, as well. And they would move to Gretna and kind of get that going in the 1880s. And it remains relatively the same size, relatively agrarian until again probably the last 30 years. Now, it’s the fastest growing city in the state and the fastest growing county.

-Springfield

Springfield, fourth of the cities gets its start as an unsuccessful ghost town. It originally was a town several miles away called Sarpy Center that was going to have the railroad come through and it was going to have the courthouse and the courthouse ended up going to Papillion. So, Sarpy Center lost out. The railroad decided not to build in Sarpy Center as well. And so the town founder, James Spearman, who was a Civil War veteran, took most of his buildings, hitched him up to horses and drug them a couple of miles down the road to where the railroad was – where the Missouri Pacific was and started Springfield. So, that’s how Springfield gets its start.

The last one doesn’t happen till the mid-20th century, which is La Vista. It has a different totally different story than the kind of pioneer origin story. It’s really a group of individuals who wanted to create there. They had a housing subdivision that was actually an unincorporated Sarpy County.

Was this the 1950s?

All those other cities have the luxury of time and with that transformation – La Vista does not.  I mean, they don’t necessarily go from dirt roads and horse and buggy. They have to stand out. Yeah, you know, city planning and ideally sidewalks, monitor paved roads, figuring out a pathway for public education in their community. All of that had to be sorted out in a relatively short amount of time by people who were not necessarily politicians and community members who stepped up to the challenge. There was a little bit of you know, developing a police force, having a volunteer fire fighting force, all of that and he figured it out in the early years in the 1960s.

So, yeah, each has their own unique history. And when you put them together, you get a wonderful history of Sarpy County!

Other parts in this series:

Sarpy County Museum Interview: Ben Justman, Executive Director of the Sarpy County Museum, Part One
https://papillionbusinesses.com/blog/sarpy-county-museum-interview-executive-director-ben-justman-part-one
Sarpy County Museum Interview: Ben Justman, Executive Director of the Sarpy County Museum, Part Two
https://papillionbusinesses.com/blog/papillion-interview-ben-justman-executive-director-of-the-sarpy-county-museum-part-two/

Sarpy County Museum Interview: Ben Justman, Executive Director of the Sarpy County Museum, Part Two

PapillionBusinesses.com Interview with Sarpy County Museum’s Executive Director, Ben Justman, Part Two

Image of Ben Justman, Executive Director of the Sarpy County Museum

I’m very curious about economic development and immigrants when they come here. So, what do they do? What do their children do? Where does everyone go? I’ve done some of that for Omaha and that has been very interesting. And then what happens to the community how they survive?

There’s been different waves of immigration. Our immigration records here are predominantly prior to World War One. And so that’s, that’s going to be, but not exclusively, extensively German or Czech. But there’s others from all different parts of Europe, Italy, Hungary, various parts of Germany that became Germany, France, Ireland, England. I mean, really, Norway is another big one. It’s really, it’s all over and there’s a few from Asia that are in those 7000 immigration records, but it is predominantly European. I do know that for many of those people, they were in this country for years before because there were no pressures to move towards citizenship. So, they came in the 1870s. And then 30 years later, they decided, I think I’ll file for citizenship status. It’s been interesting with some of those records to see that process.

As it gets closer to World War I, the funnel tightens and so there’s some challenges from the court system about the authenticity of them becoming citizens. Some petitions are denied. So, that’s been interesting. We helped. I want to say that was right before COVID, or maybe during 2020. One, a gentleman tracked down some of his historic German ancestry through those immigration papers. So, and he was a local, was from Papillion, his family still has ties here. But he lived in Latin America, and worked for a soccer club and was hoping with his wife [would] eventually to move to Europe and part of the EU and work for a soccer organization there. But that would be apparently a lot easier if he was able to connect his new citizenship, connection to the EU.

Other immigration stories that are here that probably can be fleshed out a little bit more are connections with South Omaha.  They were given the meatpacking industry…there was, around the last turn of the century, seems to be a good size Latino population that was around here. We know that based on some draft records from World War I where people have put their country of origin as Mexico. They’re not necessarily reflected on those immigration papers that we have in our collection although the immigration papers do show a tremendous amount of information for some of them, even the ships they came in on.

Otherwise, there’s an opportunity to probably research more. It doesn’t come till later, but the African American experience in Sarpy County, the black experience. There were black Exodusters, who came here [as] pioneers. Exodusters [were] people who left the South after the Civil War. Conditions were not great, you know, especially after 1877, after reconstruction. And so, you have a number of African Americans, many former slaves or will be the next generation move to places like Kansas or Nebraska, or Iowa. And so, there are some black families who resided here in the 19th century to document some of their story. And we also have, again from that public history aspect. Over 700 African Americans who worked at the Martin bomber plant during World War II. Many of them probably didn’t live here in Sarpy County, but would have certainly worked here and had a good paying job at the Martin Bomber Plant. It’s an interesting, really, you know, so it’s always interesting, local history.

I like to think that in some ways all history is local. But when it starts to widen, construct drawing larger connections, this is more than just, you know, Aunt Jenny came to tea last Sunday. You see that often, and like the local newspapers, this is when there’s always that wider aspect of drawing conclusions on larger levels. Sometimes that’s regional. Sometimes that’s national and obviously with the Martin Bomber Plant there’s international connections there. I think it happened really just like maybe several 100 yards from where we are sitting right now that 2000 bombers were built during the war, including the ones that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan to help expedite the end of the war. That’s international history right in our own backyard here.

It would be interesting to trace the bombers, different things and see the impact on today with maybe which villages were saved or people.

Yes. It’s the atomic program and ultimately, the planes have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan are world altering and there’s a local connection, right here in Sarpy County.

I didn’t realize these two planes were built here.

Yeah, there were about a little over 500 B29s bombers built here in Sarpy County, including what’s called the silverplate bombers. Tibbets, who was one of the pilots came and selected a handful of bombers to be part of that program. So, one of those is at the Smithsonian in DC and the other is at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

What do you see as economic trends through history through time?

It’s a good question.

Curious about how things move through time. How do you keep a neighborhood alive when there’s a mass exodus of some sort. For example,  the children of the immigrants get better jobs and leave the neighborhood. How do you reinvent the neighborhood?

I think that is probably more of an Omaha aspect. I think about, you know, how neighborhoods and Sarpy County have changed and revitalized, you know, South Omaha was heavily Czech; heavily steered towards the meatpacking industry. There’s so many packing [plants] there. Different immigrant populations have come in and taken the reins over the years.

Some of that bled over into Sarpy County. I mean Bellevue at one time prior to World War I was fur trade post and prior to World War II, a very sleepy village. It was. It kind of missed the mark, lost out in history on some of that those early pioneer goals. It went into decline. Other communities grew like Papillion and Gretna and Springfield, and then after World War II and since, Bellevue has grown and continued to grow in some areas, but its history and its future is heavily linked to the base. And so, that I mean Offutt’s Nebraska largest employer. So, that’s that’s, a little different dynamic, I think in a specific neighborhood. I mean, the question could be posed, which is outside of my historical jurisdiction, you know, what is what are some of those neighborhoods in Omaha look like? West Omaha? What is Western Omaha going to look like in 50 years as Omaha continues to go grow West? Because there are certainly people who talk about you know, West Omaha was 132nd at one time and now it’s Elkhorn. Sarpy County’s dynamics are different in the fact that that land between the cities is essentially shrinking. And so, the cities are growing and what used to be you know in pioneer days was 10 mile ride by horse from Bellevue to Papillion was a half a day. 10 miles today is not that much by car. You know, it’s half hour or 20 minutes and you’re here and that land that was you know, 370 with less stoplights, farmland is filling in as the two communities grow. And the same with Papillion and Gretna too.

It will continue to fill it in areas, but the area for the most growth is basically Western Sarpy County that used to be challenging because the infrastructure for urban development couldn’t … It took time. It took effort and took money for that to happen and that is all been accomplished. And so, at this point, that area is poised for some change. And I mean that that will be one more step towards connecting the whole metropolitan area and Lincoln as well plays into part of that. But you know, you can see as a historian some of the trends and see what’s going on in the future. Yeah. It’s also terrifying sometimes. I’d rather not always see it coming. But you can at least get a glimpse of where things are heading.

I think the Omaha metro there was a . . . there used to historically be a stronger divided line for the county line. There’s Omaha above Harrison and out here. For a long time, it was why would an Omahan come to Sarpy County? And that argument I just don’t see any validity anymore. There’s things to do around here, whether it’s the Sarpy County Museum or Fontenelle Forest and Bellevue Little Theater, Storm Chasers… There’s, there are the Valla’s. I mean, the list goes on from a tourism, from an economic development standpoint. And there’s homes that are popping up and with that entire planned neighborhoods.

We try to really just document all the history and with it too, though, not just the past, but also what’s going on today. Or at least in the last 40, 50 years. I think one of our challenges outside of developing a whole new institution is making sure we don’t have gaps in our collection. So, all the development everything I just rattled off, that’s part of our history. It’s new history, but it’s definitely something that’s culturally and historically significant.

And we want to make sure that that part of that story at the very least works its way here and it’s documented so that the fourth graders 50 years from now will know what was going on. Because 200 years is gonna be ancient history to them, but they might be interested in (they often are) what happened during their grandparents’ lifetime. And that could be going on right now. So, some of our aspects, now for example, hard to do more to collect history from the 60s, 70s, 80s. Don’t mean to single out people of a certain age, but the boomer generation … we’re at a at a time where we need to start thinking about how do we document their history. How do we tell their story, whether it’s the Vietnam experience, or what it’s like going into high school in Bellevue, Papillion, Gretna in the 60s? What is it like to help out on the family farm, not in the 1870s, but in the 1970s.

So, those are the sorts of things we need to start thinking about as an organization and have tried to make sure that history is included here as well so that we don’t have those gaps. History doesn’t end in World War II. It’s continuing and we want to make sure that next chapter has a space here.

I think a lot of people don’t think that way. What history is they haven’t pushed so far into the time period of living people but if you don’t preserve now, you’re not going to have it later. It becomes too little, too late. You’re scrambling to get just a fragment of what was there. I mean, we all know, we all think gee, what if I could have only asked my grandparents these handful of questions. Well, why not just stay ahead of the curve and try to do what we can now before it’s too late, before we’re at crisis point?

That’s good advice.

Other parts in this series:

Sarpy County Museum Interview: Ben Justman, Executive Director of the Sarpy County Museum, Part One
https://papillionbusinesses.com/blog/sarpy-county-museum-interview-executive-director-ben-justman-part-one
Sarpy County Museum Interview: Ben Justman, Executive Director of the Sarpy County Museum, Part Three
https://papillionbusinesses.com/blog/sarpy-county-museum-interview-executive-director-ben-justman-part-three/