By: Dylan Francis, Follow South Jersey Intern
CAMDEN, N.J. – Taco Loco is a local Mexican food spot in Camden, New Jersey. The restaurant opened in 1991 and has served the Camden community for over 34 years. A pressing need for diverse Mexican food was needed in Camden due to the ever-growing Mexican community already in the city.
“We started our business in South Jersey because at the time there was a growing Mexican community with no Mexican restaurant or store in the area,” Marco Muniz, owner of Taco Loco, said. “The closest Mexican restaurant/store was all the way in North Jersey being Passaic, so we took the opportunity to start the first Mexican restaurant in the area. Now in the present, the community and our business have expanded beyond the Mexican community. With the help of social media, we now have a diverse clientele and serve them all.”
Through the introduction and evolution of Taco Loco, the restaurant has experienced competitors starting to pop up around them. With new businesses trying to also attract the large Mexican community in Camden, Taco Loco had to think about ways to differentiate themselves from the competition and set themselves apart.
One way they have done this is by making sure their employees are a blend of Spanish and English speakers, which extremely increases the number of customers that are available to them. Another way is to listen to what their consumers want, whether it’s locally in Camden or on social media.
“Thanks to social media culture we were constantly being asked if we had Birria Tacos,” Muniz said. “Where Birria was never a thing before, until social media made it famous. We had no choice but to add it to the menu. Good thing we did, as it’s our number 1 seller.”
With that suggestion from their customer base, Taco Loco started to incorporate social media into their business plan to adapt to the changing of the times. With social media being so popular among the younger generation and starting to leak into the older generation, now is possibly the best time to grow your business through social media more than ever before. Taco Loco wants to make sure to not fall victim to the downfalls other restaurants have had by not being on social media while addressing potential issues before it affects them.
“The only adaptation we can think of is using social media to our advantage and staying with today’s trends,” Muniz said. “Other than that, we have to be able to be patient for some days or weeks, but at the same time always have to stay relevant. The only way to stay relevant is by using social media. Just about everyone in today’s time has some type of social media.”
Reflecting on their time in Camden, Taco Loco hopes that their business will have a symbiotic relationship between themselves and the community. They want the business to make the city of Camden a better place to be for its current and future communities.
When looking into the future of their business, Taco Loco hopes to grow to a national level and continue to get better every day.
“We see our business becoming a national restaurant chain in the next 10 years,” Muniz said. “The steps we are taking now is we are becoming more organized as we go, recording all the recipes, adapting to modern trends, and using social media to leverage our restaurant.”
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