Abraham Feliz travels all over the world monthly as a UPS cargo pilot flying 747 jets.

McAllen is Feliz’s home base where he lives with his wife, Valerie, and their two young children. Feliz flies out the midpoint of every month from his home city on a UPS plane or a commercial jet to Louisville. From that Kentucky city, Feliz will help pilot UPS jets to Hawaii, then to Australia and Asian countries. He then makes his way to Germany on the last overseas global stop before heading home. 

Feliz is traveling two weeks a month. He returned home to more than his family with the November 2023 opening of a Teriyaki Madness restaurant he and Valerie own and operate. They are navigating the first few startup months of managing a busy business.

“I never thought I’d be doing this,” Valerie Feliz said just after a lunch rush at the North 10th Street restaurant in McAllen. “This is a new endeavor for us.”

In With the New

Attracting the couple to Teriyaki Madness was the Denver company’s training and support. It is one of the fastest-growing fast casual restaurant chains in the country. Teriyaki Madness has added 50 new restaurants nationally in 2023, including the one in McAllen. The restaurant features customizable bowls with items such as chicken or steak teriyaki mixed with different types of rice, noodles and vegetables.

The menu of Japanese-style bowls appears to be one many local residents are willing to try and are enjoying, if the first months of business are any indication. The Feliz couple is very happy with the reception to the first Teriyaki Madness location in the Rio Grande Valley. They also acknowledge their share of operational glitches common to a startup business.

“You’re the owner,” Abraham Feliz said. “We’re always asking ourselves, ‘What improvements do we need to make?'”

Applying Skills

Abraham and Valerie were new to being business owners and did not have a background in the restaurant industry.

What they did have were some equity with properties and real estate. They also possess the skills learned in their respective professional careers. Valerie Feliz is a longtime educator, starting as a classroom teacher and, over time, rising to become a public schools system administrator. She was trained to create and follow procedures and processes. She also had deep experience in human resources and managing staffs upon becoming a business owner.

Abraham Feliz as a pilot is likewise precise in following steps and procedures in going through all of the systems required to fly large jets. These backgrounds and skills of their respective careers have been useful in starting up a restaurant from scratch as new franchisees. All of those skills and more are imperative to overcome the challenges of Abraham being away two weeks out of every month. It leaves Valerie back home to manage the couple’s new restaurant while also caring for their two young children, each under the ages of five.

“Women in the workforce face so many challenges,” Valerie Feliz said in recounting the difficulties of maintaining work/home balance after the births of her children. “Leaving my profession was so hard for me after all of the years I put into it but having this business gives me more flexibility in caring for my children.”

Facing The Competition

Abraham Feliz first tried a bowl from the Teriyaki Madness menu in Hawaii on a stopover during his FedEx global flights.

The healthy fresh food concept of chicken, steak or salmon with noodles and vegetables in a hot tasty bowl is an option he thought would be a unique choice among the bevy of restaurant choices in the Valley. On North 10th, just past Trenton Road, Teriyaki Madness finds itself in the midst of chicken, hamburger and sit-down restaurants touting the names of well-known restaurant chains.

Abraham and Valerie are hardly deterred in facing so much competition for the restaurant dollar, but they are straightforward in recounting times of computer crashes when their restaurant’s registers went down or when supplies were late in arriving. They approach those challenges with positivity and are appreciative of being part of a promising business enterprise.

“We were amazed by the amount of work that went into opening,” Abraham Feliz said. “We got to our goal. Now it’s making adjustments and improving upon what we do.”