Lucas Jones spent about $200,000 on a green
buildout of his fresh mex restaurant on Racine Drive this time last year. But the customers he credits with keeping Islands Fresh Mex open in this tough economy may never see the well-fixtured inside of his place.

Jones said he hadn’t planned on starting the catering end of his business until he’d been open about a year.

But after only three months, he had to rethink his business plan. “By October, we realized that lunch and dinner weren’t paying the bills,” Jones said. “We decided to take on catering.”

Jones said his father, Dr. Ken Jones, a physician at Christiansburg Family Practice in Christiansburg, Va., suggested going after medical catering. Dr. Jones helped locate some Wilmington contacts who could give Islands Fresh Mex Catering a shot.

When the restaurant is a year old next month, catering will have made up about 25 percent of the revenue.  “I may not have been able to survive without it,” he said.

Islands has nine full-time employees, but Jones hasn’t had to bring on any additional help yet to run the catering side of the business. “I’ve been blessed with really good employees,” he said. He bought a van when he opened, mostly to serve as a traveling billboard for the restaurant. But it has been getting a workout in his first year. He said he can deliver hot meals as far away as Jacksonville.

Jones said he has handled as many as five catering jobs in a day. His target groups are in medicine like drug company representatives explaining new pharmaceuticals to groups of doctors.

He hasn’t yet started aggressively selling or marketing the catering side of the business, relying instead on customer referrals.

“They’d use me once and then they’d use me over and over again,” he said of his clients. He said one loyal customer has spent as much as $15,000 on catering with Islands
since October.

“There are so many options out there,” he said. “You really have to be perfect every time,” to keep clients.
His next step is to begin maketing the catering side of the business and maybe “hire people to promote it and sell it,” he said.

Jones said part of his success has been because his fajita buffet line offers something for a wide variety of tastes and dietary restrictions.