Food Town, Vale Todo Downtown’s fast food and hangover alternative

The proposal to combine food and entertainment was not in the plans of the team of Anything Goes Downtown until the Covid-19 pandemic changed the rules of the game. With the disco not being able to function due to the rules of the new normality, in January 2020 presented a convenience store that allowed them to continue operating until they could return to their core business. But even when the nightclubs had the chance to reopen, they had to do so while maintaining a distance that forced the place to continue transforming: they put tables and chairs and installed a small kitchen to offer snacks and meals to accompany the drinks. An added service had come to stay.

“When we returned as a club, we decided to leave this service due to its good results. It wasn’t that people went to the disco to eat, but everyone was welcome to have a snack,” says Claudia Achuy, general manager of the disco, who soon realized a detail: people preferred to save the snack for the end, as for the ‘come down’. “That gesture made us start to wonder what people would like to eat when they leave the club. And that’s how the idea of ​​offering soups came up,” explains the businesswoman about the beginnings of a space that they present today under the name of Food Town.

a different experience

In the entrance area to the disco, where people usually received a complimentary snack and drink, there is now this fast food space in which two dishes stand out: chicken broth and aguadito; food banners ‘raise the dead’.

Starting at 2 in the morning, the soups are sold and can be eaten at a bar set up in this space or they are served ready to go. Prices range from 9.90 soles (the medium portion) and 14.90 (the largest). And although it is true that soups are not difficult to find in the early hours of Miraflores, there is no place that presents them like Vale Todo.

“Our ways are fun. The drag queens are there at delivery time, they invite you, they joke. It’s not like having soup in any other place, it has the identity of Vale Todo Downton”, says Achuy.

And for those who don’t want to wait until dawn, Food Town also has options such as hamburgers and waffles with erotic designs that have become a sensation on social networks: the real v (in the shape of a penis) and the queen v (in the shape of a penis). of vulva). Both products are priced at 12 soles.

Twenty three years of changes

For Claudia Achuy, renewing the Vale Todo proposal is a constant motivation. “Staying in trend for 23 years with the same name and in the same place is a day-to-day job,” explains the manager who has been an active part of the business for 13 years, although her family began this story 23 years ago: in the 2000.

“My family had a liquor store and my dad distributed to many venues and nightclubs of all kinds and at all times, he worked 24 hours a day. If you ran out of merchandise, he would go and take you, ”says Achuy about the business that connected his father with the nocturnal world. “When my dad opened the disco, he told me that it was going to be a place for the LGBTQ community and I wondered why, because within my family nucleus we were not so close to this community. But he realized that it was a niche that did not have so many services. This is how we started: with a room, which is today the electronic music room, and we have been growing through effort and year after year. Now we have 5 rooms with 5 different types of music and a much larger capacity”, explains the businesswoman.

But the Achuy’s link to the LGBTQ+ community transcends business. “My family is part of the Chinese and Japanese community. So, this issue of fighting to make minorities visible comes from that side. My dad is from a Chinese immigrant family, my grandfather was Chinese. When my father was a boy, he felt a lot of discrimination and that made him feel identified with the community, not because he was gay, but because he was a minority”, points out Claudia, who studied Economics and, after working in “almost all the banks in Peru”. , joined the family business eager to contribute from his different professional experiences.

“The beautiful thing at Vale Todo is that we don’t just work as a place for night entertainment. We are a brand that intertwines art and culture. We have artists (drag queens, dancers, choreographers, set designers, etc.) who show their art every day, and we do constant work by and for the community. We don’t just do things for ‘pride’ and that’s it. Now we also have alliances with institutions and companies in order to make the community visible. And we’ve been going to the pride parade since it started in Lima, since it’s been around the same time as us,” recalls Achuy, who says: “This is not just a disco, it’s a place with a heart.”