Mari: So, my first question is: tell me a bit about your story — how many years have you been in the restaurant industry, where did you learn, and how and when did you come to Miami?

Taci: Well, I’m from Minas Gerais, and the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil, as everyone knows, loves cooking, right? We grow up around a wood-burning stove. So food has been part of my family nature since I was born. But I started working in the restaurant sector when I was around 23 years old.
I graduated in Business Administration, then I went to study Law. When I was in my third year of law school, I realized that theoretical work wasn’t for me. I wanted to work with people, in a more commercial area, and I saw that food was already part of my life as leisure and pleasure.
So I cooked, I liked hosting people — even when I was young, since childhood. I was always helping my mother and my grandparents, and at 23 I opened my first restaurant. It was a commercial restaurant in a business area of Belo Horizonte, in Minas Gerais, and I knew I wouldn’t go very wrong because if we had tasty food and everyone working in that area had access to fresh food at a good price — and it really worked out very well.
For a first business, with not a very high investment, it was a great experience in the food industry. I stayed there for about three years, and then I got married early — at 28. My husband was from São Paulo, so we moved there. When I got to São Paulo, I saw that the food industry was extremely competitive — very, very competitive.
As I said, I think São Paulo is one of the cities with the best food in the world — probably in the top five, in my opinion. And I thought, “Wow, I won’t be able to work with food here because there’s way too much competition.” So I took a sabbatical year thinking about what I wanted to do, because I had changed my life completely, and São Paulo wasn’t a place I identified with, especially regarding family life. I started researching and saw an opportunity with brigadeiros at that time.
For family reasons too, we always made brigadeiros — obviously every Brazilian makes them for kids’ birthdays. But I felt the brigadeiro product itself lacked a real concept. That’s when I created “Brigadeiria” in 2007. Brigadeiria was an innovative concept because it was the first actual brigadeiro store inside a mall — a real boutique. I remember people would walk by and say, “Wow, how is she going to pay the rent selling brigadeiros?” And I would say, “Guys, I’m not selling brigadeiros — I’m selling an experience, I’m selling gifts.” People would come in, and we had beautiful fabric-lined boxes — true gifts. So we began being considered a gift shop that also sold brigadeiros if you wanted to eat one.
And it was a success — Brigadeiria really became a hit. It became the category reference in Brazil. I no longer had control of the brand name because people opened “brigadeirias” all over Brazil — like how you say “Gilette” instead of razor. People would say: “There’s a brigadeiria over there, a brigadeiria here…” but the real brand Brigadeiria was just ours. Still, we felt honored that it had become a category. Three years later, I saw the business would grow a lot and would go beyond our ability to maintain it as our own operation. So I realized we needed to grow through franchising. I partnered with Cacau Show, a major franchisor with 2,500 chocolate stores, and they needed an additional brand. Everything worked out, and I stayed for about two years in the brand integration process.
But then I realized I lost the essence of what I loved — which was creating, creating brands, making products. When you franchise, you need to standardize, you can't change the décor every month or you drive franchisees crazy. So I sold the rest to them and came to explore the American market — this was in 2010. I only came to see it; I had no intention of living here. My family was never against it, but we didn’t dream about moving to the U.S. When I arrived, I saw many opportunities — not necessarily in food, because New York (where I first went) has amazing restaurants and concepts. But I felt the lack of a certain care — personalized service, high-quality food made daily. One thing is opening a wonderful restaurant, but three months later the quality drops, the service changes, the cleanliness isn’t the same. And it caught my attention that there weren’t Brazilian references here either. That’s when I thought, “Let me research why — why isn’t there a Brazilian place that feels like home?” And that’s how the concept of Sagrado started forming in my mind. At that point, it wasn’t a business plan yet.
After six months of research between New York and Miami — the two cities I chose to study — I realized Miami in 2010 was another city entirely. I can’t even describe it — it was really a port city. There were no gastronomic references, no major companies, no CEOs living here. It was more of a tourist destination. And that’s where I saw opportunities — because I thought the city had a lot of growing to do, unlike cities already extremely mature. I went back to Brazil, talked with my family. My husband works remotely, so he said we could consider moving. We made a plan to come, and I already had Sagrado fully conceptualized in my mind — it just didn’t physically exist yet. So I studied the market more and chose Miami for that exact reason — New York already had many great concepts, but Miami didn’t. I also understood that Americans love coffee — they’ll drink 10 coffees a day if you let them — but there was no cozy environment to enjoy it, eat something, have weekend brunch… without needing to be in a full restaurant or in a fast “grab-and-go” coffee shop without places to sit.
So two years later, I started developing Sagrado’s project, and we opened in 2017. I adapted my family, and we opened in 2017 — but I don’t know if you remember, we had a hurricane that year. For us Brazilians, that was shocking — and that hurricane shut Miami down. So I actually had to open in 2018. That was my first huge challenge — “How is a hurricane going to stop everything I planned for three months?” But it did. In 2018 we opened Sagrado, bringing together all the research and life experiences I had. And that was it up until 2018.

Mari: What is your favorite dish?

Taci: I change preferences sometimes, but at Sagrado, currently, I love stroganoff. I think our stroganoff is very unique — other countries don’t make it like we do. And I also learned it’s not a Brazilian dish — it’s Russian in origin.
But we make it in our wonderful style. So stroganoff is my favorite dish. Today I’m also in love with our filet with madeira sauce — something you don’t find here — with a sauce made from the meat itself and mashed potatoes made with real potatoes. Because most mashed potatoes you find around here are made from powder, right? So my passion today is our filet wine — our “filet madeira wine” — with mashed potatoes made from potatoes. That is my preference.