Mexican restaurant's banquet room is big success

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Jul 28, 2004 by Janice Francis-Smith

Tim Wagoner and his partners knew it would be a good idea to open a banquet hall in their restaurant. They just didn't know how good an idea it would turn out to be.

The 3,500-square-foot banquet hall within the Cocina de Mino Retaurante Mexicano, 6022 S. Western Ave., could almost be regarded as a community center in south Oklahoma City.

I've got two different groups in there right now looking at a couple more events, said Wagoner. And I've got a women's worship group coming in here tonight. We're getting a lot of different kinds of events in here.

When we built it out a couple years ago, we really anticipated doing wedding receptions and Quinceaneras (a Hispanic girl's 15th birthday and coming-of-age celebration) and things of that nature, said Wagoner. But we've had a couple of trade shows in here, we have this political forum deal going on this week. So we've gotten a lot of different uses out of it that we really hadn't anticipated, but it works out good for us.

With three video screens, multiple speakers and the technology to run PowerPoint, VHS or DVD presentations, plus a bar, dance floor and separate restrooms from the rest of the restaurant, the banquet room lends itself to company seminars as well as Super Bowl parties and family reunions.

Wagoner recalled one wedding party that seemed to roll several different events into one. They came over here for the wedding reception about noon, hit the buffet line at 12:30, Edgar Cruz started playing - and he played until 2:30, he said. Half the family was from Oklahoma and half from Texas, so at 2:30 we had the OU- Texas game on, and they watched the football game. At 6 o'clock they had a DJ come in, and they had the wedding dance until about midnight. It was a great deal.

The cost of renting the room is factored into the charge for catering the event, which ranges from around $10 to $15 a head. Most events held in the banquet room involve between 100 and 200 people.

Oklahoma City-based Artistic License has painted the walls of the room to give the vivid impression of being in an old whitewashed church in a tropical clime. The bone-colored plaster appears to give way to exposed brick in places, while a toucan perches in a flowering tree. A potted plant appears to sit near a flowing water fountain, which looks really good in pictures - really good, said Wagoner. The paintings are so well done, one customer asked the staff to open the shutters on the windows, not realizing the windows were constructed of nothing more than paint on a flat wall.

While the main restaurant area is a harmonious riot of bright colors painted to look like a street scene in Mexico, the banquet room is painted mostly in subdued colors so as not to clash with patrons' wedding or Quinceanera gowns, he said. Plus, the room is elegant and understated enough to lend itself to a variety of uses, including a political forum last week by the Oklahoma City Council of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC.

Wagoner is one of five partners that took over Cocina de Mino in 2000. Wagoner, Fidencio Medrano, Angel Medrano, Alan Webb and Pedro de Paz bought the company out of bankruptcy and redesigned the business plan while keeping most of the original menu items.

Our tamales are still our same tamales, we still have to dice the beef, noted Wagoner. That was one of the things that built Cocina de Mino, back in the early '80s. To make sure the tamales taste the same at all five Cocina de Mino locations - three in Oklahoma City, one in Midwest City and one in Norman - most all of the food is prepared in the big kitchen at the S. Western location and shipped out to the stores.

So adding food for one more venue wasn't such a big proposition. The owners had the idea to open a banquet room when the main location was moved from the Interstate 40 and Meridian Avenue area to SW 59th and S. Western in 2000, but the banquet room was opened about two years later, said Wagoner.

We had never had a facility like this. There have been some hurdles to get over, he said. But over all, the project fits in very well with the business model already established - multiple venues supplied by one kitchen. It's easy for our people to handle, he said.

The banquet room also allows the restaurant to take a greater role in the community, he said. In addition to the political forum, the room also regularly hosts seminars for the United Way and South Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce functions. This (room) has brought a whole different crowd, he said.