A California-based couple with no experience in the hotel business industry took a risk and launched a burrito spot in a Home Decor parking lot in 2021, and made $2.3 million in less than five years. As business boomed with shoppers stopping by for a bite, they managed to open another outlet in July 2025.
The spot in the Home Decor parking lot is a 200-square-foot shed named LJ’s Lil’ Cafe. The outlet was started by the couple Holmes, 36, and Clarke, 33, who met in 2012. “One thing that we bonded on was how much we enjoyed trying new places and finding these hole-in-the-wall places or super extravagant places that just had really good food,” Clarke told CNBC Make It.
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Burrito Spaces Delivers Income of $2.3 Million
Holmes and Clarke went in and took the spot in Home Decor with no prior experience and purchased the shed for $95,000 in 2021. A close family member agreed to loan them the amount to help them secure the business. The previous owner who sold the shed to them also ran a cafe out of it. Running a food spot at a parking lot seems like an atypical choice, but Clarke stressed that the location was “one of the biggest sells.”
She explained that they did not stress about how to pull diners into their outlet, as customers’ primary shopping need was Home Decor, and while the crowd already exists at the location, they simply had to walk in for a bite to cool off their hunger from the long shopping time. This “built-in customer base,” she said, which included both shoppers and in-store employees.
The business from both the burrito outlets touched $2.3 million in 2025. “We went into this (Home Decor outlet) with no experience. We didn’t know about marketing. We didn’t even have any social media accounts or an email account. The early stages of the restaurant involved a lot of trial and error and learning. What kept us going back then was the great feedback we’d get,” she summed it up.