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Mendez family has developed cult-like following here

By Shannon Fiecke

On warm Fridays, they line up before the window opens at 11 a.m. The crowd is mostly men. All ages. Hispanic and Caucasian. White collar and blue.

As the Mendez family prepares tacos, burritos and other Mexican favorites from the tight quarters of Taco Loco’s colorful drive-up restaurant on Shakopee’s west end, customers munch on free homemade chips and salsa.

Some carry their lunches to one of the shelter-covered picnic tables. On cold days, they scarf down their meals in cargo vans and trailer-laden trucks on the worn parking lot.

Taco Loco seems an unlikely spot for such a popular take-out joint, housed in a ramshackle old Dairy Queen in the shadow of a 162-year-old malting plant on a forgotten-looking strip.

But in less than seven years, the family-owned fast-food eatery has developed a cult following far beyond Shakopee’s borders — despite opening after the heavy traffic went away with the Highway 169 bypass.

The loyal, sometimes fanatical customers who’ve made the drive-up part of their lives (including Rahr Malting truckers across the street) are dreading its closure at the end of the month.

The four Mendez brothers — Noe, Josue, Tino and Aurelio Jr., ages 23 to 30 — continued running Taco Loco with their mother Irma after their father died two years ago, and have decided to consolidate operations at their new location on the other end of First Avenue.

They long sought a second location as a backup for the aging drive-through, Josue Mendez, 27, said. And now, with the economy, business hasn’t been enough to operate both.

It’s been a sad month for them and their customers, many who count the Mendezes as friends.

Although the former Fajita Republic location across town is roomier and in great condition, its modern indoor space “won’t be the same.”

“There is something about the drive-through,” said Lindsay Bock, a college student/waitress who drives from Eden Prairie just for Taco Loco. Her sister even comes from Buffalo, Minn. “This place was so much fun in the summer.”

First home

Before stumbling onto Taco Loco, Jordan resident Scott Stier, who is on the road a lot for work, used to eat at the typical Mexican fast-food chains. This food is healthier, he said, adding that the Mendez family even processes its own meat.

“I can’t even describe it. It’s so much better,” he said. “It’s authentic.”

The exterior of the original Taco Loco is as homemade and authentic as the food that draws its lunchtime crowd.

The place is proudly dressed in the colors of the Mexican flag, with a red roof and stenciled-block letters displaying the business name.

Computer printout photos of entrees are plastered behind the large glass panel at the front of the building. Posters advertising the upcoming Latino dance, as well as new menu items, are often duct-taped to the green, white and red-painted brick.

Although every square inch is hand-decorated, the 49-year-old building — which the Mendez family rents — clearly requires work. When they first moved in April 2003, they replaced the gas and water lines.

The drive-through lane’s menu board has since broken, so customers order at the window and the Mendez brothers spot them coming on a surveillance camera.

“It isn’t much to look at,” mused one man about the place a couple summers ago, while ordering next to a reporter, “but the food is great.”

But the exterior just adds to Taco Loco’s allure, its decorative flare reminding customers of places visited while vacationing in Mexico or living in certain quarters of the southwestern United States.

“It’s more authentic than what they serve in Mexico now,” said Stier.

Josue Mendez said his family’s restaurant is the only local one he knows of that claims to be both “fast-food and authentic.”

Kyle Cadwallader, an air-traffic controller who moved from Eden Prairie to Uptown a few years ago, can attest to this. He continued driving to Shakopee twice a week in the months after his move because he couldn’t find another restaurant like it.

When Cadwallader lived in California, he used to frequent such
places. He describes it as a hole-in-the wall, mom-and-pop store.

“This is like Mexican food and the other places are like white Mexican food,” he said.

The family hopes eventually to open another drive-through with a small indoor seating area, but in a spot where high traffic will really make the business soar — enough to hire non-relatives so the family doesn’t have to work as much as it does.

“We’re not going to give up that easy. We will pop up somewhere, I don’t know when or where,” Josue Mendez said.

It seems that the people will follow.

The business has thrived on its regulars, but many in Shakopee still aren’t aware of Taco Loco.

“We’re just not in the right spot,” Josue Mendez said.

The current location was less than ideal for another reason. On hot summer days, malt fumes from the towering Rahr Malting could be overpowering. However, it didn’t keep people away.

“Even that I like,” Bock said, whose cravings for the restaurant have increased with her pregnancy. “When I smell malt anywhere, I think of Taco Loco.”

Chicago roots

Although Taco Loco has developed quite a fan base in the Twin Cities, the family’s cooking didn’t meet immediate success in Minnesota.

Shakopee was its last shot after pulling up roots in Chicago to bring its food to the state.

The family was lured to Minnesota by a traveling businessman from Bloomington, who ate at its restaurant near a train station in Chicago and told them there was nothing like it in Minnesota. Two
weeks later, he stopped again, encouraging them to make the move.

Aurelio Mendez Sr., and his wife Irma, immigrants from opposite ends of Mexico who both came to the United States as teenagers for work, wanted to get their sons out of Chicago. They took a trip to check Minnesota out and then returned home to pack up their bags with three of their six sons, Josue Mendez said.

After scouting out the Twin Cities area, the Mendezes opened restaurants in Glencoe and Hutchinson in McLeod County.

Neither restaurant took off in the more rural setting, so Irma and Aurelio, who lived in Chaska, decided to give it one last try and put all their effort and money into a vacant building on County Road 69, across from Rahr Malting.

Josue Mendez remembers the property owner asking if they were “sure” they wanted to do this.

When business started picking up in Shakopee, he gave his two-week notice at his job. He and another brother had been helping support the family with outside work.

Initially, Taco Loco was open 24 hours a day, and family members took 12-hour shifts. The restaurant took off by word-of-mouth. Customers often tell the brothers that so-and-so told them about the restaurant.

In Taco Loco’s first years, the former Taco John’s next door changed hands frequently before the current Mexican seafood dine-in opened.

At one point, the Mendez family also ran a place next door, serving more high-end food in a sit-down environment. But the rent was high and the family decided to stick with what worked — its outdoor business.

Today, Taco Loco supports Irma, the four youngest of the Mendez sons and their four children. It’s what the family patriarch always wanted.

Aurelio Mendez, who had type II diabetes, died in March 2007 from a diabetic coma while in the hospital with pneumonia. He and his wife were in Indiana when he fell ill.

At the same time, the Mendez brothers were preparing to tell their parents they would to oversee the restaurant, hoping Irma and Aurelio would take it easy and work less.

Customers probably weren’t aware Aurelio, a friendly business owner, suffered so much from diabetes. He overworked himself and was always on his feet, a son said.

“His work killed him in the end and that’s the way he would have wanted it,” Josue Mendez said.

Future

Josue Mendez thinks the family’s food is popular enough that each of the four brothers could operate a restaurant of his own in the Twin Cities someday.

The family was scouting out other spots, and when the former Fajita Republic became available last spring, “we jumped right at it,” his older brother, Auriolo Jr., said. Unfortunately, the building lacks a drive-through, “but if people really like the food” they’ll come in, he said.

The family has long known it would need to leave the original Taco Loco location. But the closure was sped up by the economy, which forced many regulars to drop off, Josue Mendez said, so business hasn’t been enough to pay the bills and cut paychecks.

It was also difficult to be spread between two locations, without enough business to hire additional staff. With the closure of Taco Loco No. 1, Auriolo Jr. said the family can expand the menu and hours at the second store. He already offers delivery service, and also wants daily breakfast, maybe with a buffet.

Josue Mendez hopes his mom Irma can work less now that there’s just one store again. He plans to take some time off to try to launch the family’s famous taco sauce on grocery store shelves, an initiative customer Scott Stier is helping with.

Customers already buy jars of the pureed salsa from Taco Loco to pour on all types of food at home.

It’s not chucky, like the average store brand, and is fresh and packed with flavor, Stier said.

The Jordan man, who runs an automotive business and also owns property up the street from Taco Loco, has been coming here for almost as long as it’s been open — five days in a row sometimes. The fare is also popular with his girlfriend, fellow dealers at the Shakopee Auction Center, and his friends and a brother-in-law on the Shakopee police force.

“It’s depressing,” he immediately says when asked about the closure of his favorite restaurant.

Although they’ve known the family business since they were young, the Mendez brothers each has a special role to play and is good at a particular task.

Josue is one of the more social members of the family and coaxes customers to try something new, just like his dad did. His parents, who started dating while working at a restaurant, culled their recipes from their time in the business and their homes in Mexico.

The couple also created their very own entrees — like the Papa Dilla, a corn tortilla stuffed with potatoes, onions and jalapeños, closed with toothpicks and then deep-fried and smothered in American cheese.

“My mom is the backbone of the place. She makes the rice, the beans, the stuffed peppers,” Josue said.

“There’s a lot she does that the customers don’t know about.”

Irma is saddened by the closure of the place that brought them success in Shakopee.

“The business is our first home,” Josue said. “It’s in our blood. We don’t know anything else.”

Shannon Fiecke can be reached at 952-345-6679 or sfiecke@swpub.com.

Store info

Taco Loco No. 1 in Shakopee was scheduled to close at 835 First Ave. W. on Nov. 30.

Taco Loco No. 2 has opened at the former Fajita Republic, near Dangerfields, at

1555 First Ave. E. Its phone number is 952-224-2449.