I Will Take Mine Trashy

Since it has been beautiful weather the past couple of days I decided to open up the windows in my apartment to let the fresh air in. Unfortunately the fresh air was infused with the aroma of Torchy's Tacos downstairs. I took it as a sign that they would be my next victim for my blog post.

After disappointing findings with Amy’s Ice Cream, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Torchy’s Tacos does an excellent job in utilizing their great word of mouth and promoting themselves to the Austin community.

On Torchy’s website, they have a section dedicated to news of the month where they share updates about the chain and announce new topics. This month Torchy’s announced the opening of a new location on South Lamar and the celebration party for it. The celebration will be on Wednesday April 6^th at their new location and there will be free tacos and beer.

To get the word out about their celebration, Torchy’s uses both facebook and twitter to stir up a conversation about the event. They ask their followers who is coming and tweet more details about the event. Torchy’s is very good about responding to their Twitter and Facebook pages in a timely and friendly manner.

Torchy’s is smart to have a celebration with the community for its new opening! By giving away free tacos, Torchy’s is making people familiar with the new location so in the future they will know where it is and can recommend it to others.

Additionally they are making it easier for people to try Torchy’s for the first time. Skeptical and picky eaters are more likely to try new food when it’s free instead of wasting their money on something they are not sure about. Most importantly the celebration brings a community together around Torchy’s tacos.

This is not even the first time that Torchy’s has given out free tacos.  In February “ Goggle Hotpot teamed up with Torchy’s location for one weekend limiting up to 10,000 tacos” (Austin: Can you Taste it?). Torchy’s truly gives a lot to our Austin community, and for that the Austin community loves them.

Not only is Torchy’s giving out free tacos, but they have created a new taco to benefit Japan’s tsunami relief. Torchy’s created the Mr. Miyagi taco as taco of the month, and $1 of every taco will go to Americorps to help with Tsunami relief in Japan. As a customer, when I see this on their website I have a new respect for a restaurant.

To raise more money Torchy’s has been tweeting about their new taco and posting statuses in order to get the word out. I found it fascinating that Torchy’s commented on so many people’s tweets about the taco asking how they liked it. 

I could clearly see that Torchy’s was using social media to not only promote a good cause but to find out what consumers think of their product. Torchy’s seems to be one of the restaurant that will tweet back to you if you tweet them and question or comment.

This Austin franchise is funny in the sense that they are concerned about what people think but at the same time they are not afraid to flaunt the fact they have “damn good tacos”.

On their home page they have a section dedicated to their awards and there is a link to their yelp page. If a company had terrible reviews they would not link their homepage to the negative comments. However, Torchy’s knows they have good tacos so they use their positive comments to boost their reputation even more.

Overall, Torchy’s Taco’s is a great franchise that gives to the community and utilizes their resources and good reputation well. Well done and keep it trashy.

Photos: torchystacos.com