Award-winning Mesa restaurateur

B-8 The Arizona Republic Saturday, August 23, 1975 

Award-winning Mesa restaurateur began with 4 tables 

The story of a man’s rise from rags to riches is no fairy tale for restaurateur Manuel Matta of Mesa.

He has lived the story from the $1 a day he earned in the fields to the $750,000 a year business he operates today.

Friday night, Matta was named Mexican-American small businessman of the year for the way he expanded his restaurant into a dining spot with south-of-the-border flavor that seats 355 persons.

He was honored along with several other persons and firms at the second annual Mexican-American awards banquet, which was held in the Adams Hotel.

The awards banquet was sponsored by the Arizona Small Businessmen’s Association and the National Economic Development Association (NEDA) office in Phoenix.

Dr. Reynaldo Pisano, national board chairman of-NEDA, said the small businessman’s award goes to “somebody who has made it completely on his own through sheer guts... It is someone in the minority community who is a successful businessman whom the rest of us can look up to.”

With judging by such criteria, Matta fills the bill.

During the lunch hour at Matta’s Restaurant, 932 E. Main, several hundred people dine beneath hand-wrought chandeliers or beside a tiled fountain on the enclosed patio. Many of the decorations were hand designed in Mexico for the restaurant, Matta said.

Matta said he and his wife operated the first diner while Matta held down a welding job from 5 to 10 a.m. each day.

When the sales reached $25 a day, the Mattas told each other they could make it if they could increase sales to $35 a day.

And when the sales reached $35 a day, they told each other that perhaps they could hire some part- time assistance if only they could reach sales of $50 a day.

At the current level of $750,000 in sales annually, the Mattas are telling each other that If they could arrange financing, they could expand to two restaurants.

This hope comes in the wake of tripling the size of the restaurant and adding a kitchen to handle the lunch and dinner trade. It also comes after the rest of the family — all the Mattas’ children — have been initiated into the restaurant business.

“It has been quite a struggle for me and my wife,” said Matta, a man with just a sixth-grade education.

But he is pleased that diners come regularly from Sun City and Casa Grande to eat at his restaurant.

NEDA, an organization funded by the Small Business Administration and the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, assumes the task of helping people like the Mattas expand their businesses through technical assistance.

Struggling businessmen, most of them minority group members, also receive help in obtaining loans, straightening out their books, advertising their products, and other business tasks, according to NEDA.

Such services, plus regular classes, are offered at no cost to the businessman.