From Chef Willy: Important Message about Visitantes growth.
To everyone who has visited Visitantes, shared a meal with us, supported us, told a friend about us, or taken the time to leave us a five-star review:
Thank you.
Those five-star reviews mean more to me than a rating on a screen. They represent people who experienced what we were trying to create and took the time to tell the world about it.
That support helped Visitantes grow in Vieques.
And now, Visitantes is growing again.
We are currently raising less than $2,000 to help us complete the immediate permits and licensing needed to expand our ability to serve communities throughout the San Juan metropolitan area.
If you would like to help us move forward, you can contribute immediately through Cash App, PayPal, or Apple Pay using 787-234-5377.
Every contribution helps us move to the next level faster.
We Are Already Launching in San Juan
We are not talking about a plan for some distant future.
We are doing this right now. Follow our page On Instagram and Facebook
At the same time, we are building the independent Vieques service we always envisioned: pickup and delivery throughout the island, with two scooters bringing food directly to you at the beach, your guesthouse, your home, or anywhere you are staying.
At the same time, we are building the independent Vieques service we always envisioned: pickup and delivery throughout the island, with two scooters bringing food directly to you at the beach, your guesthouse, your home, or anywhere you are staying.
We have already secured our location in the San Juan area, and we have already begun serving food as part of Phase One.
Just as we did in Vieques, Phase One allows us to introduce Visitantes to the surrounding community, let people sample our food, listen to their feedback, and refine the experience based on what people actually enjoy.
That is how we built Visitantes in Vieques.
We tested our portions.
We tested our flavors.
We tested our sizes.
We tested our menu.
We listened to our customers.
And we watched how people actually responded to the restaurant.
Now we’re doing the same thing again—but this time, we’re doing it in a dramatically larger market.
We are allowing people to experience our food and contribute whatever they feel they can afford.
And if someone is homeless or doesn’t have money for food, we feed them anyway.
That’s part of who we are.
And Vieques Is Not Going Anywhere
I also want to make something very clear:
Visitantes Vieques is not over.
The work happening in San Juan is an expansion of Visitantes—not a replacement for the business and community that helped us get here.
During the low season in Vieques, we are using this time to work on the San Juan project while continuing to prepare Visitantes Vieques for its next chapter.
Visitantes Vieques will reopen November 1st for pickup and delivery only.
This gives us the opportunity to continue serving Vieques while also using the slower season to build, restore, organize, and prepare for what comes next.
The place where Visitantes began is still part of our story.
Vieques is where we proved the concept. San Juan is where we are expanding it.
And we’re moving forward with both.
Why San Juan Is Such a Big Opportunity
Vieques gave Visitantes the opportunity to prove itself, but the scale of the market was naturally limited.
Our new operation is positioned to serve communities throughout the San Juan metropolitan area, including Condado, Ocean Park, Miramar, Santurce, Calle Loíza, Isla Grande, Old San Juan, Isla Verde, and Carolina, along with surrounding communities.
The broader metropolitan area represents well over 1.3 million residents, before even considering the enormous number of tourists and visitors who come to San Juan, Carolina, and the surrounding communities every year.
That makes this opportunity incomparable in scale to what we could accomplish in Vieques.
And we’re already here.
We have secured the location.
We have begun Phase One.
We are already serving food.
We are already engaging with the community.
Now we are raising support to help us move quickly through the remaining permits and licensing requirements necessary to expand our ability to serve these local communities throughout the San Juan metropolitan area.
The Communities Around Visitantes
Our vision isn’t limited to one neighborhood.
Ocean Park, directly east of Condado along the Atlantic coast, is a laid-back beach community with a strong residential and visitor presence.
Miramar, across the Condado Lagoon, is a historic neighborhood known for its architecture, restaurants, tree-lined streets, and waterfront.
Santurce and Calle Loíza are vibrant centers of food, art, nightlife, local businesses, and culture.
Isla Grande connects us with the Puerto Rico Convention Center, Distrito T-Mobile, entertainment, business, and the regional airport.
Old San Juan connects Visitantes to the historic heart of Puerto Rico and the enormous number of visitors who come to experience the capital.
And Isla Verde, just east of San Juan in the municipality of Carolina, brings another major concentration of hotels, restaurants, beaches, residents, and tourists into the larger service area.
This is the community surrounding Visitantes now.
We Always Intended to Build More Than One
From the beginning, the vision for Visitantes was never to open just one business.
We always planned to build more.
The long-term vision is to develop Visitantes into a concept that can expand into additional communities, additional locations, and eventually a franchise model.
But we’re not waiting for that future to begin.
We’re doing it now.
The larger historic facility we have secured gives us more space and a much greater opportunity to demonstrate what Visitantes can become.
The work involved with this facility is even larger than the work we undertook in Vieques. We are restoring and transforming a historic building into a Visitantes, creating a much larger platform for the next stage of the business.
The Vieques project taught us how to build the concept.
It taught us how to listen.
It taught us how to test the food.
It taught us how to refine the experience.
And now we’re taking everything we learned and bringing it into a much larger market.
Your Contribution Helps Us Move Forward
This is why your support matters.
We are not asking you to fund an idea that doesn’t exist.
We have already secured the location.
We have already begun Phase One.
We are already serving food.
We are already engaging with the community.
Your contribution simply helps us move faster through the permits and licenses necessary to expand our ability to serve the communities around us.
Every contribution helps.
If you can contribute $10, $25, $50, $100, or whatever you feel comfortable giving, it helps us take another step forward.
Cash App, PayPal, and Apple Pay: 787-234-5377
And if you are a business owner, property owner, investor, entrepreneur, or community leader who sees what we are building and would like to discuss a business relationship, a Visitantes / Visitor Center in your community, or eventually bringing the Visitantes concept to another location, we want to hear from you.
This is how we grow:
One community.
One customer.
One relationship.
One Visitantes at a time.
And To Everyone Who Has Supported Us
If you have already taken the time to leave Visitantes a five-star review, I want you to know something:
You will always eat free at Visitantes.
That’s my thank-you to you.
And for those who want to make an even larger contribution to help us move into this next stage:
Anyone who contributes more than $250 will also receive a complimentary two-night stay at my guest house in Vieques, subject to availability and advance arrangements.
I want the people who helped us build Visitantes to have the opportunity to experience where this story began—and to know that you are part of what comes next.
To everyone who has supported us from Vieques to San Juan:
Thank you.
Your support, your reviews, your visits, your conversations, and your contributions have helped us continue moving forward.
And now we’re taking everything we learned in Vieques and bringing it to a much larger community.
Please follow Visitantes on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok and watch this next chapter unfold.
We have already started.
Now we’re building bigger.
And if you have questions, want to discuss the project, want to talk about a potential business relationship, or simply want to speak with me personally, feel free to call me at 787-527-2638.
I’d love to hear from you.Follow our page on Instagram
Always Forward, Never Backward.
With love and gratitude,
Willy
Visitantes
Vieques & San Juan, Puerto Rico