TAMPA, FL \u2014 The fast-growing Rreal Tacos, a Georgia taco chain, is expanding into Florida. <\/p>\n
The Atlanta-based company is known for its street tacos and other menu items made fresh in-house from scratch daily. <\/p>\n
Rreal Tacos bought the former Haiku Asian fusion restaurant in downtown Tampa, where it will open its first location in the Sunshine State, according to a news release. <\/p>\n
This restaurant will mark the state of the company\u2019s multi-unit expansion across the Tampa Bay region.<\/p>\n
Construction is underway at the downtown Tampa restaurant, which is expected to be the first of three planned Rreal Tacos locations in the Tampa Bay area. Future expansion potentially includes St. Petersburg and Clearwater.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not just opening a restaurant \u2014 we\u2019re entering a market that reminds us a lot of Atlanta before Rreal Tacos really took off,\u201d Damian Otero, CEO, said. \u201cTampa is energetic, it\u2019s growing fast, and it\u2019s underserved when it comes to this category. It made a lot of sense for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company plans to invest approximately $2.5 million into the downtown Tampa location, transforming the existing space into the brand\u2019s signature high-energy, design-forward restaurant experience.<\/p>\n
Unlike many rapidly expanding restaurant groups, Rreal Tacos is not backed by private equity or outside investors.<\/p>\n
This allows the chain \u201cto move quickly, take creative risks, and stay obsessively focused on quality,\u201d the company\u2019s leadership said. <\/p>\n
Tampa was targeted because it \u201cstood out as a rare opportunity: a major metro with strong dining demand, vibrant downtown foot traffic, and significantly fewer comparable Mexican concepts than similar Southeastern cities,\u201d according to the news release. <\/p>\n
\u201cTampa feels like the Nashville of Florida,\u201d Otero said. \u201cRestaurants are busy, people here love going out to eat, and there\u2019s real opportunity to build something special that feels local.\u201d <\/p>\n
See Also: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, FL \u2014 The fast-growing Rreal Tacos, a Georgia taco chain, is expanding into Florida. The Atlanta-based company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-125263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}