Who Invented Taco Tuesday? The Old Ads, the Trademarks and the 2023 Fight

Most of what we know about the early years comes from Gustavo Arellano, the author of Taco USA, who went through old newspapers for a 2018 piece in Thrillist. We don't name other restaurants on this site, so you'll read "the Wyoming chain" below. The sources at the bottom of the page name everyone.

The record, year by year

• An ad
• A trademark
• A fight

1. Oct 16, 1933
   El Paso, Texas

   A cafeteria advertises "Mexican Tacos" on Tuesday, three for 15 cents. It's the earliest Tuesday taco ad historian Gustavo Arellano could find.

2. About 1949
   Albuquerque and Green Bay

   A lounge in New Mexico gives away tacos on Tuesday. A place in Wisconsin throws in free coffee with its Tuesday tacos.

3. Jan 31, 1967
   Arizona

   A small ad in the Arizona Daily Star: "Tuesday, 6 for 98 cents." Still no name for the idea.

4. Aug 20, 1973
   Rapid City, South Dakota

   A drive-in tells Rapid City Journal readers to "Stop in on Taco Tuesday." This is the first documented use of the phrase.

5. 1975
   Manhattan, Kansas

   "Every Tuesday is Taco Tuesdays," at 19 cents a taco.

6. Nov 2, 1976
   Pomona, California

   A Southern California drive-thru chain runs "They're TACO TUESDAYS" in the local paper.

7. Feb 6, 1979
   Somers Point, New Jersey

   A bar and restaurant starts its own Taco Tuesday promotion, according to The Washington Post.

8. Dec 2, 1979
   Indiana

   The earliest ad Arellano found from the Wyoming chain that would later own the phrase.

9. 1982
   New Jersey

   The Somers Point restaurant registers the phrase with the state. Arellano dates its filing to 1979; the Post says 1982.

10. 1989
    United States

    The Wyoming chain gets a federal trademark, good in every state but New Jersey.

11. 1997
    Laguna Beach, California

    A restaurant with a state trademark from 1984 sues eight competitors, as the Los Angeles Times reported then. Arellano puts the claim at $5 million and says it settled out of court.

12. Aug 2019
    USPTO

    LeBron James's company applies to trademark the phrase. The trademark office refuses, calling it a commonplace term.

13. May 16, 2023
    USPTO

    A much bigger national taco chain petitions to cancel the trademark, saying nobody should own a common phrase.

14. Jul 18, 2023
    United States

    The Wyoming chain gives up. Its CEO says paying millions to lawyers "just doesn't feel like the right thing to do."

15. Oct 24, 2023
    New Jersey

    The Somers Point restaurant surrenders its registration after four decades. The phrase is now free in all 50 states.

Did a chain invent Taco Tuesday?

The Wyoming chain said so for years. Its site told customers, "We started it!" The trouble is that Arellano lined up what the company itself had said at different times, and the answers don't match. The "Taco Twosday" part, two tacos for 99 cents on its slowest day, does seem to be real. Arellano traces that promotion to Salina, Kansas, not Minnesota. But by then, the phrase had been running in ads across the country for years.

To be fair, a company can do plenty with an idea it didn't invent. By 1982 the chain's ads were running in Kentucky, Montana and South Dakota, and that helped make it a national habit. Inventing it is a different claim.

Why Tuesday?

No one has documented it. Alliteration is the obvious answer for the phrase. A slow night is the obvious answer for the deal, and owners say so. One California owner told the Los Angeles Times in 1997, "We took the slowest night of the week, and it's now our biggest night of the week by 40%." Neither explains the cafeteria in El Paso, which was selling three tacos for 15 cents on Tuesdays 40 years before anyone wrote the two words together. It could just be a coincidence that stuck.

How can anyone trademark two common words?

It's a fair question, and the US Patent and Trademark Office eventually gave two different answers. It registered the phrase in 1989. Thirty years later, when LeBron James's company applied, it said no because the phrase was too common to point to any one business. That second answer made the first one look odd.

In May 2023 a bigger national chain filed to cancel the mark, arguing that "nobody should have exclusive rights in a common phrase." Two months later the Wyoming chain gave up rather than pay for the fight. The New Jersey restaurant held out until October. Trademark lawyer Josh Gerben told CNN its legal bill would likely have run to six figures, and that its chances were low. Today any US restaurant can print the words, which is why we can too. We're not lawyers, so that's history and not advice.

Is National Taco Day the same thing?

No. According to L.A. Taco, it began with Mexican restaurant owners in San Antonio. On April 30, 1968, Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez recognized them on the floor of Congress and declared May 3 National Taco Day, which also happened to be his birthday. The date drifted for decades. October 4 took hold around 2004, and a chain's 2009 press release made it stick. It isn't an official holiday.

What do Mexicans make of it?

Steven Alvarez teaches a course called Taco Literacy at St. John's University in Queens. He told Arellano: "Among Mexican folks, the idea that one day of the week could be reserved for tacos is ridiculous. We don't need to call it 'Taco Tuesday'; we just call it 'Tuesday.'"

Taco Tuesday on our roof

Here's how it runs at Cantina Rooftop right now. Unlimited tacos, $25 per person for 90 minutes, with a live DJ on the rooftop. Tuesdays, 5pm to 11pm, last reservation 10pm, and it's by reservation. It's loud, and it's about a 20-minute walk from Times Square. Read how it works.

Here are the tacos on our regular menu today, at menu prices. Ask us when you book which ones are on the Tuesday list.