The realities of Trump-era American taco life have arrived in San Francisco.
The first brave restaurant to embrace this even-more-expensive guacamole hellscape is San Francisco's Tacolicious restaurant chain, owned by hospitality veteran Joe Hargrave. It has wasted no time letting its loyal customers know about the immediate changes in its menu in an open letter yesterday.
"We got some good news and some bad news …," their Instagram post reads.
"A couple slight changes on the horizon that we're needing to stay ahead of. I'd appreciate it if you'd take a minute and save the following to memory so that next week when we're live our guests are getting good information from each of you. First, the bad news: The White House's order to place tariffs on goods coming from Mexico will greatly impact the cost of excellent limes and avocados we use for so much of our menu. While we source many ingredients locally, these are items for which there isn't a local alternative we can source without significant price increases for our customers."
However, the menu update wasn't all bad news.
"The good news: To keep our prices in line, we've tweaked our menu, and it's resulted in some delicious additions."
Tacolicious' new post-tariff pivoting comes in the form of a new garbanzo-avocado hybrid guacamole, a lemon-lime margarita made with a 1:1 ratio of Mexican limes and U.S.-grown lemons, and an additional, 100% avocado guacamole, which is making its official transition to the world of luxury foods priced at almost $20 per order.
Hargrave's letter is a masterclass in transparent marketing and has been well received by his customers.
"Fantastic, transparent way to both explain costs / prices to customers and the consequences of people’s votes," wrote an influencer in the most-liked comment.
It's also the first taquería that L.A. TACO has seen leaning hard into the taco life economics of this new Trump era.
Hargrave tells L.A. TACO that he felt obligated to post because he learned that "people like to understand why things are the way they are, and if they have clear information, they can more easily buy in."
"I think, maybe because I don't have control over the situation and my company is blessed with a lot of regular guests, that I'd better make sure that our service team goes onto the floor with a real clear answer as to why we're messing around with prices," he says.
On the other side of the guacamole inflation spectrum, Chipotle's CEO Scott Boatwright was recently interviewed on NBC, taking an opposite stance by not raising the price of their guacamole.
“We don’t think it’s fair to the consumer to pass those costs off to the consumer because pricing becomes permanent,"Boatwright told NBC Nightly News. "And so again, back to the idea of delivering extraordinary value to the consumer. We’re going to stay the course."
In Los Angeles, L.A. TACO has not been notified about any local taquería taking a similar approach as Hargrave. However, the L.A. Times recently interviewed Luis Navarro of Long Beach's Lola's Mexican Cuisine on how he's preparing to absorb the 25% increase in everything imported from Mexico, including all tequila and Modelo beer.
Hargrave is also closely monitoring the tariffs and Trump's volatility. Yesterday, many outlets reported that Trump may roll back some of the tariffs, but nothing has been announced. Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is set to have a call with Trump tomorrow and retaliate with a tariff on U.S. goods as soon as Sunday.
"For all human rights issues, I'm pretty far to the left," Hargrave admits. "I also realize we live in a country of 330M+, and there are a lot of cultural perspectives that need to be considered if we want to get anything done. I'm not sure Trump shares this type of makeup. To my mind, he lacks the selflessness required to lead. I think "America First" is embarrassing, as I feel pretty strongly that the United States needs a globalist, not a nationalist. We're stronger when everyone is stronger."
So far, Hargrave has been blown away by the responses.
"Honestly, I also received some very kind text messages," he says. "It's amazing how people react when they have the opportunity for perspective. Yesterday was quite a lesson for me. Communication, man, it's everything."
