Chef Claudette Zepeda on Building a Hospitality Empire as a Single Mom

Claudette Zepeda grew up as a border kid between San Diego and Tijuana. On top of that, she spent summers in Guadalajara, watching her aunt run a bustling restaurant. She didn’t know it then, but those summers created the foundations for Mexican cuisine and hospitality in her mind. Then, she became a mom at 18-years-old. Claudette was a kid raising her own kid. She needed to pay the bills, sure. But what Claudette wanted more was to figure out how to build intergenerational wealth – and how to inspire young single moms to believe they could do it too. 

In this episode of 9 to 5ish, Claudette shares: 

• Why she never allowed herself to dream beyond getting off food stamps and paying her bills on time
• How she stumbled into being a celebrity chef thanks to “right place, right time” 
• Why it’s detrimental to not talk about failures publicly 
• A recent on-air mess up she can’t stop thinking about, and what it taught her 

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