Sharing life lessons

Arkadelphia native encourages ‘Promise’ graduates to work hard, be teachable, passionate

Ashton Samuelson and her husband, Austin, are co-founders of the Tacos 4 Life Grill, which they use as a way to help feed hungry children in Africa. A native of Arkadelphia, Ashton recently spoke to the fifth Arkadelphia Promise class of high school graduates.
Ashton Samuelson and her husband, Austin, are co-founders of the Tacos 4 Life Grill, which they use as a way to help feed hungry children in Africa. A native of Arkadelphia, Ashton recently spoke to the fifth Arkadelphia Promise class of high school graduates.

When Ashton Samuelson graduated from Arkadelphia High School in 2004, there was no Arkadelphia Promise.

“It would have been beneficial,” said Samuelson, who now lives in Conway

with her husband, Austin, and their 1-year-old son, Jet. “It is really a good deal for the graduates.”

Samuelson, who along with her husband founded Tacos 4 Life Grill, was the featured speaker at her alma mater when the fifth class of Arkadelphia Promise graduates was recognized recently at a signing-day ceremony.

Jason Jones, executive director of the Arkadelphia Promise organization, said about 125 “Promise students” signed and will be attending college in the fall.

“It’s a little smaller than some classes, but it’s a good class,” Jones said.

“It was an outstanding day for the Arkadelphia Promise,” he said. “It marked the fifth year of the program.”

Announced on Nov. 6, 2010, the Arkadelphia Promise Scholarship will pay the difference, or gap, between the dollar amount of an Arkansas Academic Challenge (Lottery) Scholarship and the dollar amount of the average cost for tuition and mandatory fees at the four southern-Arkansas public universities.

Jones said the Arkadelphia Promise Scholarship can be used to help pay tuition and mandatory fees at any accredited two-year or four-year public or private college or university in the United States. The Arkadelphia Promise Scholarship is funded by Southern Bancorp and the Ross Foundation of Arkadelphia and is only available to graduates of Arkadelphia High School.

Samuelson is the daughter of Travis and Lisa Berry of Arkadelphia. She has one sister, Whitley Slabach, who graduated from Arkadelphia High School in 2008 and now teaches English in Xian, China.

Samuelson said she shared her life story with the graduates and encouraged them to do three things — work hard, be teachable, and have a passion for what they do.

“I shared with them our core values,” she said, referring to the principles she and Austin adhere to and encourage their employees at Tacos 4 Life and others to practice.

For every meal purchased at the two Tacos 4 Life restaurants in Conway, the Samuelsons donate money to fight childhood hunger.

“I told them, ‘Wherever you go across the nation, … work hard, … give it all you’ve got,’” she said.

“Austin and I did not have any restaurant background when God gave us the idea for a restaurant. We had worked with the local hungry in Los Angeles. … We had worked in soup kitchens. God showed us the reality. … We learned about global hunger,” she said during a visit at one of the Tacos 4 Life locations in Conway.

“That was in 2010,” she said. “We learned that 18,000 children under the age of 5 die each day from hunger. That was really a turning point. … We wondered what we could be doing.”

Samuelson said she and Austin, who is from Conway, had moved to Los Angeles after they married in 2008. They are both graduates of Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia.

“We moved back from Los Angeles and settled in Conway. I got a job teaching at Little Rock Christian, and Austin got a job in residential homebuilding. We started developing our vision for helping the hungry,” she said.

“After hearing a Sunday sermon, we began to develop our business model. We would create a restaurant, where for every meal purchased, some of the proceeds would go to an organization that feeds children across the world. We started pursuing opportunities of opening a restaurant. That was on Jan. 31, 2011, when we got the idea,” Samuelson said.

“We opened our first restaurant, Pitza 42, nine months later, in September 2011,” she said. “That was a fast turnaround.

“We had no experience in the restaurant business. Our only experience was driving through the drive-thru. We had nothing to offer, but we worked our tails off.”

Samuelson said she told the high school graduates, “Wherever you want to be, be the first one in and the last one out. Do the jobs that nobody else wants.”

She told the graduates to be teachable.

“Surround yourself with others to help you. Ask your professors how you can become better, how you can grow,” she said.

“Think about the gifts that you have been given,” she told the Promise class. ‘We all have talents. Think how you can use those gifts to better the world around you.”

She further told the graduates, “Wherever you are in your life, [the Arkadelphia Promise] is giving you a chance. It is setting you up for success. Work with it. Make a difference. Be passionate about what you do.

“Keep your dreams before you. Be confident. … Spend time helping others. This is your chance; you have no excuses. This is your chance to change the world.”

Samuelson said she and her husband will have been in the restaurant business for four years in September.

“There have been a lot of changes. You have to be flexible. We opened with Pitza 42 and have now turned that into a Tacos 4 Life. We now have two restaurants in Conway and will open a third one later this summer in Fayetteville,” she said.

“We have provided thousands of meals for the hungry children since we opened,” Samuelson said.

“It’s encouraging,” she said. “It makes us remember why we do what we do.”

The Samuelsons donate funds to Feed My Starving Children, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For every meal served at Tacos 4 Life, the Samuelsons send 22 cents to provide a meal for a child. She said FMSC has developed a rice-based meal designed to meet the needs of severely malnourished children.

The meals are then sent to an organization called Children’s Cup, which is “on the ground in Swaziland, South Africa,” Samuelson said. She said the children receive the meal once a day, which is enough nutritionally “to sustain a child for a day.”

The Samuelsons continue to tell their story wherever they can. Most recently, they catered a breakfast at Super Summer Camp at OBU.

“That’s where we met,” Samuelson said, with a smile, “when we were 15. We dated all through high school and graduated from college together.”

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