Man I love Del Taco.

In honor of Taco Tuesday I present the secret history of Del Taco, here’s how it all started. The corporate flacks who run it now won’t tell you this either. You see Del Taco was founded in the mid 60’s in southern California. There were these two guys, they were rich kids, avid surfers and, let’s face it, pot-heads. Each day they’d meet at the beach in their rainbow day-glo painted VW camper vans (or maybe they were woodies, I forget) and hit the waves. They’d finish surfing around lunch time and then bake in the van for a while, then one guy would head south to the Burger King and the other guy would head north to the closest taco shack.

The one guy would get fish tacos, the other french fries. Then they’d meet back at the beach and have lunch.

After doing this about a zillion times (remember folks, pot-heads) the following discussion took place during one of their VW camper van bake sessions:

“Dude this is such a hassle driving to two different places for lunch.”
“I agree; totally bogus, man.”
“Wouldn’t it be totally radical if there was a resturant that sold fish tacos AND fries???”
“Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude, you are totally on to something!”

One of the guys got his rich dad to bankroll the project. The old man was only too thrilled to do so because it meant his kid was finally going to work instead of smoking weed and surfing all day. Of course the joke was on the old man because in 1976 the two founders sold all their stock to a food service company and, presumably, went back to smoking weed and surfing.

True story.