For part of his study abroad trip to India in 2010 Bert Mueller stayed with a host family in Jaipur. Mueller and some of his classmates who were also studying abroad brought their respective families food from their home countries.
“They didn’t like it very much,” Mueller says of the food he brought from the United States. But he noticed another classmate had the exact opposite experience.
“One of my friends was of Mexican origin and she would make chips and salsa and beans and tortillas,” he says. “One day I came over to her house and I saw she’d made this food for her family she was living with and they were loving the food.”
Mueller hadn’t really considered starting a business — his major at The College of William & Mary was music and public policy — but seeing a family who had never had Mexican cuisine enjoy it so much gave him an idea.
“Something clicked in my head that maybe this was something I could do — I could bring Mexican-inspired cuisine to India,” he says.
After finishing his degree, Mueller, 22 at the time, returned to India to open California Burrito, a fast-casual Southern California-style burrito restaurant.
Today, 12 years after opening the first brick-and-mortar, there are 103 locations across the country.
‘Nothing is predictable’
Mueller attributes his decision to study abroad in India to being a “contrarian.”
“I wanted to go somewhere that was radically different than the U.S. and so I decided that India was the place to be given that, first off, I loved Indian food and second, people spoke English,” he says.
While some of his classmates found the cultural differences off-putting, Mueller thrived.
“Nothing is predictable,” he says. “Every day is different and so if you find monotony dull, if you find comfort boring, then India is a perfect place to be.”
Photo courtesy of Bert Mueller.
After graduating in 2011, he decided to actually execute the vision he’d had during undergrad and start a Mexican restaurant in India.
Mueller and his businesses partners, two childhood friends who have since left the company and returned to the U.S., picked Bangalore, the fourth-largest city in the country, for the restaurant’s first location. It being an IT hub meant that many residents had traveled to the United States and had likely tried Mexican or Mexican-adjacent food.
Mueller estimated it would cost $100,000 U.S. dollars to open his first store, so he raised $250,000 from friends and family “to be careful,” he says.
The first location earned about $500,000 USD during the first year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. And that original $250,000 in funding ended up being enough for Mueller to open two more stores.
Since 2012, Mueller has continued to open up locations in Chennai, Hyderabad, and Delhi. In 2024, California Burrito brought in $23 million in revenue.
‘I never felt like quitting’
The brand’s success came despite some unique hardships.
“The biggest challenge was that the person we had hired at the beginning to run our entire operation and help us out was a very crooked individual,” Mueller says.
He hired an area manager who had worked at other chain restaurants.
“He was very well educated,” he says. “He spoke great English, so it was easy to communicate with him. And he was very helpful. He would drive us around to find vendors. He would recommend vendors. It made our lives much easier because we were 22-years-old in this foreign land with no knowledge of how to operate.”
Mueller soon found out the man he hired was charging suppliers double the cost of products and had plans of replicating California Burrito.
“He would call government officials to the store and say, we weren’t doing X, Y, and Z,” Mueller says. “He would collude with vendors to do things. And then later he went off and started his own burrito restaurant, which failed.”
The setback didn’t deter him from making California Burrito as successful as possible.
“My mom is a marathon runner, and I have that trait in me,” he says. “You have to keep going until you’ve reached the finish line. And I never felt like quitting.”
Mueller’s original plan was to only stay in India for five years, he says. But after those initial five years, he realized it would be better if the company grew its own ingredients.
Now California Burrito sources from five different chicken suppliers and planted 500 avocado trees, some of which were trampled by elephants. The company grew tomatillos in Karnataka, but “a huge amount of rain came and wiped out all of them,” he says.
Investing more in the farming aspect of the supply chain had Mueller start “thinking in decades,” he says.
And, as for now, his stay in India feels indefinite: “I don’t have an exit date planned in my mind. I love India. India feels like home to me and being home, you don’t think so much about leaving.”
Want a new career that’s higher-paying, more flexible or fulfilling? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Change Careers and Be Happier at Work. Expert instructors will teach you strategies to network successfully, revamp your resume and confidently transition into your dream career. Start today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+taxes and fees) through May 13, 2025.
Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.
