00:04 - This.

00:08 - This to me, is not even a job.

00:09 - Because I love what I do, okay? I absolutely love what I do.

00:12 - I, you know, I enjoy cooking and I always have for years

00:15 - and years, and years. And.

00:23 - I was in the car business for 30 plus years,

00:26 - and all of a sudden I find myself out of a job.

00:30 - So I have a brother in Houston, who's up to this position.

00:33 - So I called him and I said, hey, I'm going to come down and see you.

00:37 - So we went down there and, we spent about three weeks in Houston

00:41 - and one of the things I saw down there was every corner

00:45 - had a taco stand or a taco truck or taco trailer or whatever.

00:50 - Every corner.

00:52 - And so I started thinking, I'm like, you know, Harrisburg really doesn't

00:55 - have a taco truck, let alone a food truck that kind of runs around at that time.

00:59 - So when we came back,

01:00 - you know, we kind of talk with the kids at the family and said, you know,

01:04 - we're going to do a food truck.

01:05 - Let's just do tacos, because that's kind of what they do down in Houston.

01:08 - Let's see if it works here.

01:09 - And so that's kind of how it started.

01:11 - And that was six years ago.

01:16 - Being new in the business, one of the things you find out

01:18 - is nobody's going to loan you money right away because it's brand new.

01:22 - So I was, you know, lucky enough to have, my four one kid retirement.

01:27 - So I pulled money out of that.

01:29 - You know, I took a loan from my 41K and purchased a truck.

01:33 - my first truck.

01:34 - And at that time, it was just my family and and I.

01:38 - So, you know, we just started running it, you know, we developed a menu.

01:43 - We invited some people over just to do a taste test

01:47 - and came up with a menu that kind of what we thought

01:51 - worked well.

01:53 - Well, let me tell you about the name, how that came out.

01:55 - Okay. We were sitting around like, what?

01:57 - What should we call this?

01:59 - And my son sitting there and he goes, that ranch called 71777 tacos.

02:03 - That's the area code around here.

02:04 - Everybody knows that.

02:05 - And I said, okay, that's easy enough.

02:07 - So that's how the name came about.

02:09 - Right now I'm interested that you said you used to be in the car business.

02:12 - And this strikes me as a real contrast to that.

02:14 - This is like 180 degree turn.

02:16 - Is there anything in common

02:17 - with running a business like this and what you used to do?

02:20 - I always loved cooking and that comes from my parents.

02:23 - I come from a big family and I enjoyed cooking.

02:26 - And cooking is, a stress reliever for me. So.

02:30 - So I think that helped, because, you know, you you're following your passion.

02:34 - The other thing that the car business teaches you is how to market yourself.

02:39 - Before we opened our doors and this comes again

02:41 - from the car business, we did a lot of marketing out there ourselves.

02:46 - Didn't hire anybody. We did it ourselves.

02:48 - We went and created a website, created all the social media.

02:52 - And then as we were having these taste testings,

02:53 - we took some really good pictures and started posting them off.

02:57 - So we kind of whet the appetite.

02:59 - So I think that really set the tone of how it was going to go.

03:06 - Well, let's talk

03:06 - more about the appearance of the truck, the use of skulls and skeletons.

03:10 - It makes me think of Mexican folk art, I guess, is what you're trying to show here.

03:14 - For the last 20 years, we've been going on to Mexico.

03:16 - That's our vacation spot, okay?

03:18 - And, you know, we love the people who love the cuisine of Mexico.

03:21 - Okay.

03:21 - And so one of the things we saw was the skulls.

03:24 - And, you know, all the Mexican artwork and so forth.

03:26 - So we kind of decided, you know what?

03:29 - That's what we're going to go with.

03:30 - You know, it really goes with the, with the, with the theme of what they're doing.

03:34 - I love their front bumper, says tacos.

03:36 - You know, living life like every day is Taco Tuesday.

03:38 - You can't beat them.

03:39 - You have nice weather trucks outside.

03:41 - But atmosphere, it's great to partake in. It's.

03:47 - What are the basic ingredients of a taco?

03:50 - We started where we said, you know what, there's some traditional places

03:54 - in Harrisburg that do a good traditional taco.

03:56 - Very good, which is basically a corn tortilla.

03:59 - You know, your, asado, you know, flank steak, which is what everybody uses,

04:03 - you know, and then you have pickled onions and cilantro and limes.

04:07 - And that's the basics of a taco.

04:09 - But really, any filling you put in, you make a taco out.

04:12 - Okay.

04:12 - Well, how far do you depart from a traditional taco then?

04:15 - Do you have, like, a real radical version of a taco?

04:18 - I'm Indian, all right.

04:20 - So I, you know, that fusion of Indian spices

04:23 - and then some of the Mexican spices and some are similar and some are not.

04:27 - So I sort of playing around with some of those flavors.

04:30 - And from that, you know, we have I mean, our menu changes all the time.

04:34 - What we have now is not what we had just six months ago or six months before that.

04:38 - Okay.

04:38 - So we're always tweaking our menu, and, and trying different things.

04:43 - There's always R&D going on in the back kitchen here.

04:46 - Okay.

04:46 - All the time.

04:47 - All the time because I love coming in.

04:50 - And when, you know, when you we don't have a lunch event or whatever,

04:53 - I'll just spend a couple of hours and play around with certain things, okay.

04:56 - And then I'll have people try and if they like it, great.

05:00 - And also the people that work for us, they bring ideas all the time,

05:04 - and we have put many of those on the menu over, over the past few years.

05:08 - Okay.

05:08 - Someone said, why don't we do a buffalo chicken tacos?

05:11 - Everywhere you go, people like buffalo chicken and so forth.

05:13 - So guess what we did?

05:14 - Buffalo chicken taco.

05:15 - It's still on our menu, but that would didn't come from me.

05:18 - That came from them.

05:19 - All right.

05:20 - So you know and that's the thing they have a lot of input,

05:23 - people that work with us of what goes on the menu.

05:26 - It's a collaboration of, you know, everybody together,

05:29 - and we try things and if it makes sense, which goes on the menu.

05:32 - And what brings you out here today?

05:34 - The beautiful weather, the selection of food and in the mood for tacos.

05:38 - We were talking about Jamaican food walking up here, I was excited to see

05:41 - they had Jamaican flavor taco, so it went right for it.

05:44 - Well this is making me crazy. Taco.

05:46 - There is mango salsa in here.

05:48 - Some curry spice.

05:49 - I'm looking forward to that spicy kick to it.

05:52 - And there's two tacos.

05:54 - As you can see there's shrimp in there.

05:57 - And to be a

05:58 - little bit of lettuce for some freshness, I'm looking forward to diving in.

06:01 - It's been a little while since I've had tacos and I call them calling to me.

06:05 - I got a taco salad for my husband and tacos for myself.

06:08 - I got steak ones. I love steak steaks. My favorite food.

06:11 - Tell us what you have.

06:12 - blackened shrimp tacos.

06:15 - I has mango salsa on it.

06:16 - And I love mangoes.

06:23 - So how do you decide where to locate your truck?

06:25 - Obviously you want to go to the most advantageous place you can.

06:29 - So here's the funny thing about that.

06:31 - From day one, we have never sat at any corner ever.

06:36 - All right.

06:37 - We started sending emails out to different places

06:40 - that we have a taco truck, and all of a sudden

06:42 - the local winery picked us up, some breweries picked us up,

06:46 - and then we started doing a lot of different events.

06:49 - So it was always by invitation, always by invitation.

06:53 - We would show up at a place that we were invited.

06:55 - Two people knew we were coming that would share,

06:57 - you know, our menu and everything, and that's how it is.

07:00 - But it's funny to me because people ask me that all the time.

07:03 - But we have never sat at any corner ever in the six years.

07:06 - How can customers find out where your truck is going to be located?

07:09 - So every Monday or Tuesday we post our schedule on our website,

07:14 - on our Instagram, on our Facebook,

07:16 - you know, so everybody knows where we're going to be.

07:18 - All they have to do a search, you know, and our, our website knows where we are.

07:22 - And that's also the way they can book us.

07:24 - They can go on our website and request a truck to come at their company

07:27 - or their event or whatever, because we do quite a few those.

07:30 - Thank you very.

07:32 - What is your favorite thing about running a truck like this?

07:36 - It's fun. It's fun. It's a good environment.

07:39 - All right, I enjoy, like I said, I have a passion for cooking.

07:42 - I enjoy doing it.

07:43 - I, you know, we create a really nice environment on the truck.

07:46 - So we're having fun on the truck.

07:48 - There's always good music playing on the truck.

07:50 - And I can't wait to get on the truck every single time, you know,

07:53 - and just go out there and you know what the fun thing is?

07:55 - The customer on the other end sees that.

07:58 - And I love dealing with people. I'm a people person.

07:59 - I love dealing with people.

08:01 - So, you know, that interaction between customers

08:04 - and us, to me, that's that's really what I look forward to.