[Update: Gracias Señor owner Rudy Barrientos announced on the afternoon of Wednesday, December 11, 2024 that Ralphs had been unsuccessful in obtaining a restraining order against him in court that day].
Watching as his taco truck was encircled by armed men this past November, Rudy Barrientos got that old feeling that someone didn’t want him and his food in the Pacific Palisades anymore.
It was the biggest escalation yet for the owner and lead taquero at Gracias Señor, a rare and popular taquería on wheels serving the cliffbound westside neighborhood.
He knew he would likely be pushed to move locations again, citing escalating pressure from Ralphs supermarket, where he has parked his business for over 10 years.
Last January, L.A. TACO reported on Barrientos’s plight after he was served a cease-and-desist order from a lawyer who was said to be representing Ralphs. This order claimed that Rudy had been encouraging his customers to park in Ralphs parking lot simply by choosing a location on the street that was adjacent to its store.
Ralphs cited its 2012 lawsuit against the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 8, used in an effort to dissemble labor protests outside its doors, to argue Rudy’s activities outside of its store were against store policies and California law.
As Rudy spread the news to his customers and considered different locations in the area, many loyal customers and neighbors spoke out in support. Rudy tells L.A. TACO that an attorney offered his services pro bono and reached back out to the lawyer claiming to represent Ralphs.
“They went back and forth in emails, but Ralphs's lawyer never really replied once the lawyer representing us told him to please give him a valid reason why we can't park on public property,” Barrientos says. “So we kind of just thought he was done.”
The thin reprieve was shattered one afternoon in the first days of November when Barrientos claims a number of armed security guards surrounded his truck as he and his staff were preparing to leave for the day.
“A half a year passed, and then all of a sudden, one day, they brought these suited-up guards with, like, guns,” he says. “And they just, like, started, like, circling the truck. And I was like, ‘What the heck is this?’ What are they doing?’ So they didn't tell us anything. They didn't talk to me. They didn't say anything. I just remember them taking pictures of the truck and then just circling around, like, with their vest and their gun.”
Barrientos felt the familiar sting of something new brewing against him within this location of Southern California grocery giant, owned by giant-er grocery giant Kroger, along with the Food 4 Less. Further elevations intending to keep him from earning a living here would shortly follow.
Location (location, location) is everything for the success of a restaurant. This goes doubly for taco trucks and stands, which must provide consistency in a competitive street scene. Anyone who has ever tried to coax a popular taco truck from its roost with an offer to cater a taquiza and been turned down knows this.
The day after the appearance of the armed guards, Rudy arrived with his truck to find what he says were the cars of Ralphs staffers parked along the sidewalk where he, and a few other trucks, typically set up.
“So none of us had a space to park,” he says.
This led to some of the truck owners hiring employees to show up on the sidewalk next to Ralphs at three in the morning. Something Rudy says is not financially feasible for his business.
Barrientos, a positive optimist, as anyone opening a taco truck in a high-income, white-majority neighborhood must be, decided he’d rather flee the spot than fight. Ralphs has sent him another cease-and-desist and, adding insult to injury, banned him from all Ralphs stores.
“I can't and I won't make my life miserable by trying to fight Ralphs and trying to just, like, play this stupid game of coming here so early,” the taquero says.
Rudy moved Gracias Señor to the much less visible street that runs alongside the backside of the Ralphs and to another address on the other side of George Wolfberg Park at Potrero Canyon. In the interim, he says a taco stand has set up on the street at his old location, where fellow trucks like Sunset Smash have also been ordered to vacate the sidewalk in front of Ralphs.
Rudy, a DREAMer who holds a business degree, isn’t interested in fighting other businesses, especially other immigrant businesses, for space.
“I don't want anyone to think that my culture, meaning, like, the Latin community, immigrant community, that we fight against each other. And that we do anything to hurt each other's businesses… I didn't want to be another factor of why we, who are in the same boat, are having a harder time.”
Barrientos says Ralphs actions, whether they’re legally in the right or not, have already dismantled a vibrant stretch of street food vendors working hard to make a living and bringing good, affordable food to people passing by.
Since November, he says he has noticed an uptick in aggressive posturing and awkward run-ins with Ralphs guards, who encourage any vendors on the sidewalk in front of the store to move.
Rudy says his business has been down 20% since moving to the less visible new location, which has less foot traffic. In addition, he believes someone has pressured parking enforcement to be much stricter with the neighboring food trucks than in the past. However, he’s typically found its agents helpful and friendly to the mobile businesses.
Fortunately, he is blessed with community support, and his longtime neighborhood customers know where to find him and the tacos de hongos that made the TACO 69 list.
To this day, Barrientos is unsure where the animosity comes from. Food trucks have been shown to be an economic benefit to surrounding brick-and-mortar food businesses, something Rudy says he’s witnessed constantly as construction workers and students stopping by his truck inevitably go to the grocery store for beer, water, necessities, and snacks.
In addition, Barrientos is not breaking any laws by parking on the sidewalk that abuts a grocery store.
“We're completely in our right to vend outside the parking lot,” he says. “It's public street parking.
As long as we're feeding the meters, we can be there. We're not doing anything that breaks any sort of law.”
Representatives of Ralphs and the attorney for Ralphs mentioned on the cease-and-desist did not respond to an emailed request for comment on the situation.
A different Westside Ralphs, located not too far from the Palisades, appears to have a large, daily scene of street vendors and food trucks in the sidewalk in front of it, its parking lot slotted with parents' vehicles who park for school pick-ups and drop-offs across the street.
We parked in that lot with no problem or appearance of a security guard this week. Speaking with a taquero who parks on the sidewalk there, outside of Ralphs's parking lot, he told us he has never had a problem with, or heard a peep from, Ralphs in all the years he's vended there, and expressed unshaken confidence that he is within his legal right to be there.
Those who have engaged with Barrientos know he’s a friendly, warm, humble, and welcoming young entrepreneur. For his part, he’s tried to comply peacefully with Ralphs wishes, posting a sign to his truck urging his customers not to park at Ralphs.
He says he’s also cool with most of the employees and guards there. He even gave one a free sweater from Gracias Señor that a manager ordered the employee to remove while reprimanding him.
Barrientos has a strong feeling that one specific manager at Ralphs has it out for him personally and has called out bad behavior by customers in the store parking lot as one of the primary reasons Rudy has to go.
As a rare taquero in the Palisades, he’s no stranger to racism and feels that it plays a big part in the effort to remove him from the area, where he had had his start with a lonchera serving construction workers.
He’s had another manager tell him the manager in question “was not acting appropriately” and has heard that he’s been singled out by name by the manager.
“I don't think it's about us taking business away from them,” Barrientos says. “I don't think it's about the parking, even though that's what their argument is. And I don't think it's about the safety of us creating a dangerous environment. I do think it's a racial thing.”
As Rudy updated his social media following, commenters expressed their support of his business and frustration with Ralphs.
Meanwhile, he promised to “give you our best regardless of where that could be. It could be around the corner, on the mountains 🏔️ on top of a 🌲 doesn’t matter where we go we will always give you our best. The love we give does not change just cause some petty people can’t live seeing others succeed.”
Though his business has taken a hit, Barrientos remains positive. Being flexible and vacating the Ralphs area, whether right or wrong, allows him to move on from the drama and get back to work, allowing him and his employees to make a living.
“My peace and my tranquility are some of the most important things in my life,” he tells L.A. TACO. “I'm not going to be a part of this. I feel like if people like our food, you know, we can move somewhere else where we're away from the negativity. And, you know, people will hopefully just come around. And if they don't, then maybe that's a sign that we just need to, like, completely leave the Palisades.”
Rudy told us that last week.
On Monday, the taquero wrote to us over social media to update us that Ralphs had filed for a restraining order that would ban him from operating within 200 feet of the Palisades Ralphs, or 500 feet of two neighborhood schools (Corpus Christi Elementary and Village School).
The order, if granted, would effectively ban Gracias Señor from parking at its new location, as well as its old one.
Barrientos will be in court for a hearing on the matter today (Wednesday). He is stressed about what this latest escalation could mean for him after ten years of serving the Palisades.
“They could potentially give us jail time if we violate the restraining order,” he writes.
All for selling tacos where some think he shouldn’t be allowed.
