“The Pescado,” a fish taco, with crisp bits of catfish, grated red cabbage, pico de gallo, chipolte salsa, and tartar sauce wrapped in a flour tortilla.
The “Al Pastor,” a taco containing marinated pork, onion, cilantro, fresh green salsa and finely diced fresh pineapple.
Taco Truck co-founder Jason Scott with employee Lynh Pham in front of the counter at the Princeton restaurant.
Chef Tensha Rogers in front of the grill in the kitchen of The Taco Truck’s Princeton location.
The Taco Truck is located in the Princeton Shopping Center.
When The Taco Truck restaurant opened in the Princeton Shopping Center at the end of December, Princeton became the fourth brick-and-mortar location for what began life in 2009 as a food truck in Hoboken. Yet Jason Scott, who founded The Taco Truck with Chris Viola, said that the response by Princetonians to their style of “authentic Mexican street food,” which includes double-wrapped soft tacos, tortas (toasted Mexican sandwiches), burritos, salads, and sweets, differs even from their other suburban locations, including one in Morristown.
Princeton, for example, is the first Taco Truck to offer burritos. “People started asking for them from day one,” Scott said. “We’ve ended up having them at all locations.”
The biggest distinction, though, is the number of families Princeton serves compared to their other markets, which include eateries, trucks, carts and kiosks in New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. “We see a lot more kid’s menu items ordered, so we’ve added a combo pack. Plus, it has made us rethink what we need to do better to serve those families. So in the next few months, to make them feel really welcome, we’re going to roll out activities for the kids in the store. We find that particularly because we’re not a fast food restaurant — you order, you sit down, we bring the food out to you — it’s a little bit longer experience than you have versus the traditional fast-casual Mexican concept,” Scott said. “I’m a parent of three-year-old twins, so I know what it’s like to go out with kids!”
That combo pack, too, is now available at all their stores. “So Princeton is a good location to see how we’re doing and what we need to do to operate in a little more suburban market, to be part of that kind of a community. We’re not a family restaurant per se, but we want people to feel like we certainly are a family option. We’re learning a lot about that here.”
When Edens, the company that owns the shopping center, reached out to The Taco Truck about becoming a tenant, Scott and his partner jumped at the chance. “We’d done a lot of public events in the Princeton area — Hopewell’s Food Truck Fridays, the Mercer County Food Truck Fiesta — and a lot of private catering as well, so organically the demand began to grow. People knew who we were,” he said.
This year the truck will be at Princeton TruckFest and Communiversity. “We loved the mix in Princeton between faculty, students, the people who live here, the businesses — it fit our demographic and we were excited about the opportunity,” he said.
As for Edens, managing director Elizabeth Furnelli said, “We loved their entrepreneurial spirit, their commitment to bringing authentic Mexican cuisine to the East Coast and their unique store design! We’re thrilled that their presence at Princeton Shopping Center will help the area ‘Eat More Tacos’ (their tagline).”
The Taco Truck, which has just over 100 employees (including 15 full- and part-timers in Princeton), prides itself on four core values: the authenticity of their style of tacos, incorporating hospitality into all aspects of the business, ongoing commitment to the local community, and minimizing negative impact on the planet, both in terms of ingredients and by operating environmentally sustainable plants.
“Sustainability really resonates here in Princeton,” Scott acknowledges. “We’re not the least expensive option for Mexican food because we source fantastic natural foods so that it will taste great and be healthy for you. People here get that. They’re as passionate about that as we are.”
Scott points out that their beef, chicken and pork are raised on a vegetarian diet without hormones and antibiotics. “And most of them come fairly locally, from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.”
He acknowledges that some produce, such as avocados and limes, are impossible to source locally. “But our broad-line purveyor, DiCarlo Foods, has a local and sustainable focus as part of their business model, so it’s been great to partner with them over the years.” DiCarlo Foods, based in Holtsville, New York, lists five New Jersey farms among its “farm to fork” initiative.
Jason Scott considers the Princeton Taco Truck to be the most attractive of their brick-and-mortar stores. He points to the seat and back of the bench that runs along one long wall of the long, narrow space that last housed the Learning Express toy shop.
“You’re sitting on reclaimed wood from a barn in Lambertville,” he said. “We do LED light fixtures, low-flush toilets and we compost — that’s probably the biggest thing that we do here. All of our to-go packaging is compostable and we have a break-down station onsite and get a compost pick up twice a week.” Companywide, The Taco Truck has composted more than 400,000 pounds.
Overall, the decor of the 45-seat space is rustic-industrial in style, its most striking feature the counter where customers place their orders. The shiny, slightly curved aluminum wall is meant to evoke an outdoor food truck, complete with rivets.
In addition to the wooden bench, diners can sit on stools at high-top tables or at a counter whose windows face out onto two sides of the shopping center. In warm weather, the glass garage door that forms the wall facing the shopping center’s courtyard will be rolled up, allowing for outdoor seating for another 18 to 24 guests.
Hospitality has always been central to The Taco Truck mission, even though it launched during recessionary times.
“Yes, 2009 was a rocky time to launch, but people still wanted good food, healthy food and they weren’t necessarily willing to pay for a fine dining/white tablecloth experience,” Scott said. “We wanted to come in as kind of ‘fine-casual.’ Between our service style — running the food to the table — and having really engaging cashiers, that’s really beyond fast-casual.”
He mentions that partner Chris Viola is a graduate of Cornell’s hospitality school who worked at the Four Seasons. “And my family has been involved in the restaurant business, on the ownership side, since I was a kid. I grew up around the best fine dining operators in the world, so it’s easy for me to apply those things that I value to go beyond fast-casual. Our goal is to exceed customers’ expectations and I think we’re doing that.”
Another way to connect with customers is through community involvement or what the company mission terms “remaining active in our neighborhoods.” On opening day in Princeton, all tacos were pay-what-you-want and proceeds went to the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen.
“We try to find organizations that our employees are active in,” Scott said. “Our catering manager in Princeton, Meaghan Singletary, is very involved in TASK so we did that to honor her efforts and to partner with something that’s meaningful and aligns with our core values.”
In Hoboken, for example, The Taco Truck worked with the shade tree commission and Committee for a Green Hoboken to plant more than 100 trees.
Princeton also turned out to be “the easiest one for us to build a great team around,” Scott said. “Fortunately for us our director of operations, Nolan Woods, grew up in Trenton and lives in Hamilton.”
Woods, who joined The Taco Truck in 2013, previously worked for Wegmans in Princeton, as well as Panera Bread and Qdoba Mexican Grill. “Nolan had a lot of great people he had worked with down here and in South Jersey and that allowed him to assemble one of our best teams.”
When it comes to “authenticity,” Scott points to the menu items that are his personal favorites. “The Pescado,” he said, “sets us apart from everyone.”
That’s the Taco Truck’s fish taco, with crisp bits of catfish, grated red cabbage, pico de gallo, chipotle salsa, tartar sauce and a flour tortilla ($5.) It differs from the other taco offerings in that it is a solitary taco; others, like his second favorite, the Al Pastor (marinated pork, onion, cilantro, fresh green salsa and lots of finely diced fresh pineapple), come three to an order in non-GMO soft corn tortillas.
These range in price from $7 for Pollo Asado (grilled chicken, lime-pickled onion, roasted red salsa) to $7.75 for the Barbacoa (braised beef, onion, cilantro, roasted red salsa). Scott is also partial to the Barbacoa in torta form, and is proud of the vegetarian berenjena torta that features crispy eggplant and chipotle salsa ($8.50).
On social media, some Princetonians have voiced concerns about the wait time and the cost-benefit ratio. “Sometimes you have to say, that is just not our customer,” Scott said. But he does listen and respond. “If you get through the smoke, there are sometimes good takeaways. I look at it as a tool to improve, but I don’t necessarily think of it as reflective of the true quality of a restaurant.”
He also admits that the store isn’t drawing a lot of university students. “It’s been kind of interesting. We have a lot of Princeton faculty that comes here, but not a lot of students. Of course, we’re not on Nassau Street, and it’s hard when you don’t have a car. But we’ve done a number of events with our truck with Princeton students and they’ve been excited about our food.”
He estimates that, through Meaghan Singletary’s work, private catering (including at the university) accounts for 5 to 10 percent of the Princeton location’s business on any given week, and is growing.
Scott grew up in Chatham and lives in Jersey City with his wife and twin girl and boy. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 2002 with a B.A. in history. He has always been an avid fly fisherman and is a partner in Urban Angler, a fly-fishing supply company.
The Princeton experience, Scott said, is leading the way for future of the entire operation, which includes more locations for their restaurants, mobile operations, and pop-ups.
“We’re going to focus on opening more corporate-owned locations especially in New Jersey, filling in the gaps between Hoboken and Morristown and Princeton, and we think there’s some opportunities to move south [of Princeton].”
Franchising is also in the works. “We’ve actually done all of that work; we’re ready to go. We only get the opportunity to go to market once, and we can apply the lessons of this store, which is really the culmination of everything we’ve learned in terms of design, team training, and how to open,” Scott said. “Once you have a store that’s using all your systems and firing on all cylinders you get to see what’s not working. It’s a constant evolution and process but I feel like we’re comfortable to go out there and find some great operators who can help us grow this brand.”
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