Taco Street: An East Austin Taqueria
Open a taqueria on a crowded East Austin corridor against a beloved family taqueria, a chef's spot, a regional chain, a national burrito chain and a dozen taco trailers. Breakfast tacos, SXSW, 100°F summers and rising rents.
East Cesar Chavez and East 6th have more tacos per block than anywhere in Texas. There is the family taqueria that has been there since 1983, a chef's place with a two-hour wait and $7 tacos, a regional chain with a queue out of the door, a national burrito chain at the end of the street, and a dozen trailers in the lot by the bars. You have savings, a lender's term sheet and a recipe for salsa verde. If the money doesn't cover a second-generation restaurant space, you start from a trailer on a commissary, as half of Austin's taquerias did. The decisions are a taqueria's. What do you charge for a breakfast taco when the trailer across the street charges $2.50? How many cooks do you put on a Saturday morning? How hard do you chase the delivery apps, which take a quarter of every order? When do you move from the trailer into a building? The calendar plays too: SXSW in March, ACL in October, a summer when nobody sits on a patio, eggs and avocados that double in price, a landlord who…
$5.00 a seat · 3 simulated years, decided monthly · by SparkTower.