Who invented Taco Tuesday?

Recent events reminded me of the phrase Taco Tuesday, which has become ubiquitous in the US. From 1989 until 2023, the Midwest chain Taco John’s owned the trademark for Taco Tuesday in 49 states, claiming that they were the first to use the phrase. The company aggressively pursued its trademark, sending cease and desist letters to eateries who used the phrase in advertising. Taco Bell sued Taco John’s in 2023, seeking to liberate the phrase for all to use, saying that it was too generic to be trademarked (and no doubt because it irked them that a much smaller competitor owned the rights). Taco John’s agreed to release its trademark (as did the entity that owned the phrase in New Jersey), although the company did not concede its claim of originating the phrase. As with most such creation claims, the real story is much more convoluted.

What is clear is that Taco John’s was not the first to use the phrase. Taco specials offered on a Tuesday can be found in advertisements as early as 1933, although the first time “Taco Tuesday” appears in print seems to be from 1973 (years before Taco John’s applied for its trademark). It was used by a South Dakota company, the Snow White Drive In, in an ad in the Rapid City Journal. The alliterative phrase soon caught on, and appearances became commonplace in the years afterward. Taco John’s cannot even claim to be the first Mexican chain to use Taco Tuesday. A California chain, Baker’s Drive-Thru, featured it in advertisements as early as 1976, three years before Taco John’s used the phrase.

So why did a South Dakota drive-in and a Wyoming-based Mexican chain become among the first to use and trademark this phrase, when other states had a much larger Mexican dining scene? According to Steven Alvaraz, a professor at St. John’s in Queens (NY), this is not surprising. “To me, it demonstrates the ubiquity of Mexican food to be part of mainstream U.S. cuisine — that is, marketed, trademarked, and mass produced,” he said. “Taco Tuesday is one of the final stages of when Mexican food conquers the USA.”