Duck, duck, good food: Lucky Goose doubles Albuquerque presence with second location

Comfort food isn’t just for carnivores, and plant-based Lucky Goose is meeting the demand with a second location.

Melissa Timmons and Rafael Guillen, partners in business and in life, launched Lucky Goose out of a food truck in 2021, offering items many people crave but aren’t always available as a vegan option, including burgers, chicken, hot dogs, chile cheese fries and milkshakes.

The business has since grown to a physical restaurant in Nob Hill and earned multiple accolades, including recognition from Albuquerque The Magazine and Yelp for best milkshake in Albuquerque and a nomination from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, for best breakfast sandwich in the country.

The owners are keeping the momentum going with the opening of a second location at 4416 Wyoming NE. They hope to have the location up and running by Friday.

“I’m excited for our growth because we’ve gotten good at what we do. We’ve gotten quick, we’ve gotten efficient. I’m just excited to bring more vegan things to that side of town,” Timmons said.

Timmons and Guillen started Lucky Goose to offer greasy comfort food to the local vegan scene.

“There are some really good vegan places that are fully vegan here, but we noticed some gaps and some holes, and so we wanted to create something that we love and enjoy,” Timmons said.

“We’re not a salad and bean burger place. We’re more the things that people crave,” she added.

The restaurant’s most popular items include its Lucky Burger, the Lucky Chick’n sandwich and milkshakes, typically available for $13 to $15 per order, Timmons said.

Guillen, who has been a vegan since he was 15 years old, loves to cook and comes up with all of Lucky Goose’s recipes, Timmons said. Guillen grew up in Los Angeles, where vegan options are plentiful. Timmons grew up in Bosque Farms, surrounded by animals during her time in local 4-H youth development programs. She ate meat her whole life, until she met Guillen and decided to make the transition.

Despite the full embrace, Timmons said the pair is careful not to overuse the word “vegan” in their business.

“It tends to be a little more intimidating to those who don’t know about it or haven’t tried it. So our little slogan is 100% plant-based, 100% delicious,” Timmons said. “Our goal was always just to make good food that happened to be plant-based.”

After a year of their food truck selling out almost every time they set it up, the co-owners decided it was time to open a restaurant. They opened their first location at 3503 Central NE in 2022.

Coming from previous roles in office work and the solar industry, the pair learned the ins and outs of the restaurant world as they went.

But one of the greatest hardships the restaurant has had to endure, Timmons said, is when one of its staff members, Jaden Santini, died suddenly in her sleep in December.

“It’s probably the hardest thing that we’ve done in this business, is experiencing the loss of one of our employees. She was our main person, she was young,” Timmons said through tears.

Santini was supposed to take over managing the Nob Hill location someday; instead, the store now has a commemorative tribute to her.

“She will always be a part of it,” Timmons said.

It’s always been a priority of the Lucky Goose owners to promote within the business and they plan to make the new location a place for employees to grow too, Timmons said.

The new 1,500-square-foot location, set to open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., will create roughly 12 full- and part-time positions. Timmons said the owners hope to offer some new location-exclusive items at the Northeast Heights restaurant, including possibly tacos or a deli sandwich.

What Timmons is most looking forward to with the new location: the parking lot.

“It sounds silly, but it is really exciting because it’s hard in Nob Hill,” Timmons said with a laugh.

On a more serious note, Timmons said the expansion is in line with Lucky Goose’s mission of making a wider variety of vegan options accessible to more people.

With the restaurant’s current team of employees and a supportive vegan community backing them, Timmons said the owners feel like they’ve only scratched the surface of the recipes they want to unveil and the growth they’d like to see.

But for now, they’re taking a moment to reflect on how far they’ve come.

“The hard times were the food truck and really just busting our butts, working really hard to get where we are, and now things come a little easier,” Timmons said. “To see it thriving and doing well, it just feels really good.”