Darren E.
Yelp
Moving up to 4-stars and removing my "broken Halo" designation after an intriguing visit by chance on Friday. The owner and another family member was there. I discovered what's behind all the problems and price increases. First, 90% of the customers are wonderful, but 10% are abusive, complain wrongly and litter everywhere. I'd wondered if the story was deeper than what we see as customers on the surface and it is.
This 10% isn't limited sadly on Taco Thursday or Tostada Tuesday and so people have been abusing the business and making it impossible to keep meat and beans in-stock, particularly the next morning as I've experienced this last year on Wednesday and Friday. The owner was cleaning up messes all over the property and street and so I discovered last Thursday they had to make almost 8,000 tacos. This is why the prices are higher for everything and on-top of that the distributors raised everything during the pandemic and still haven't lowered them. Even if you put less in them, it's quixotic and so I explained how I always get something else on the menu at regular price and try to limit my tacos to 5, which I'm generally sharing. They explained if more people (or even the bad 10%) did this, the place would be spotless, they wouldn't run out of ingredients and moreover the prices would likely be cheaper. They literally run out of food and can't get anymore often for another day, that's how extreme it has gotten. They're starting to not have room to stack taco shell boxes without them breaking on the bottom now, which shows how much folks have been abusing the business.
They had a severe labor shortage the last year and have finally gotten to a decent amount of staff again which was why the hours got cut since the pandemic, plus they are learning how to make the food properly now. I asked about rate-limiting Taco Thursday and they said that the bad 10% would make things too terrible to instill a cap. Right before I'd pulled in, some guy tried to buy 20 tacos and demanded the discount price, despite it being Friday afternoon now. So the 10% of you who abuse this business on Thursday since the pandemic are ruining it for everyone. The owners aren't really at fault and they have a loyal dedication that's been severely tested.
You can hate me all you want for suggesting this, but if people rate-limited their tacos to 5 a person (who's present, and not for an army to-go) on Thursday, I think we'd see things return to how they were years ago.We might even see lower prices for some things and lets not forget most of the people working here or either quite young, or retired, so they don't deserve the fury of unreasonable customers ordering 40 tacos apiece all day long and screaming at them.
So really, these folks are trying hard and getting abused by a minority of customers ruining it for everyone else. You can imagine they have no impetus to open a second location ever again and frankly we should be happy they're still open and trying their best.
So the next time you see someone being unreasonable and ordering a huge amount of tacos or tostadas in-front of you, consider explaining they aren't just holding everyone else up, they're why it's too expensive now. They deserve shaming...if not for them the place would still be cheap and open 24/7. Just try asking them if they really are going to eat 20 tacos themselves and my favorite, why they don't order that many any other day? The 90% of us need to take back our taqueria! Let's face it, most of us have been coming probably on average a decade here, or somewhere close. The scurvy 10% shouldn't ruin it for everyone.