A small taquería in Tlalpan, struggling like other restaurants and taco shops to survive during the coronavirus pandemic, has decided that helping their clients and neighbors make it through the crisis is a larger goal than turning a profit.

At the end of March Taquería Los Pastorcitos, located on Sierra de las Cruces street in the Tlalpuente neighborhood in southern Mexico City, decided to offer free tacos to customers who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic. 

Owner Edgar Pastor and his family hung a bright yellow banner outside their shop with a message of solidarity, inviting those who were truly in need and those with hungry children to speak up. “It’s not going well for us either,” reads the banner, “but at least we can give you a few taquitos.”

The family had seen more and more regular customers ask to run a tab on tacos because they had lost their jobs or simply didn’t have the money to pay. 

The taco shop, which was already running a two-for-one special on tacos and offering home delivery, decided the time had come to start giving back to those who are in need. 

The family understands those who live on a hand-to-mouth basis, and for the past 18 months the taco shop, a hole-in-the-wall with a storefront of just five meters, has been their only income. 

But giving back to those in need, even if it’s just a taco or two, was important to the family. 

The news of free tacos at Los Pastorcitos has spread on social media to great applause, with some supporters offering to take groceries to people in need who live outside the restaurant’s delivery area, where an order of tacos would almost certainly arrive cold.

“It’s sad because people will come to us so ashamed just to ask for a taco because they are out of work,” Edgar Pastor told the newspaper Milenio. “It makes us sad, too, but also happy (to help).”

Source: Milenio (sp)