Success has been bittersweet for Tacos Uruapan. It’s nearing lunch time and I’m sitting at a table in back of the busy Hayward taqueria with the owners, Bertha Solorio and her son Antonio Solorio. Bertha is a petite woman, she’s wearing a bright magenta shirt, and her salt and pepper hair is pulled back in a loose bun. Before I finish my first question, tears have welled up in her brown eyes. Her story has the American dream written all over it: A husband and wife immigrate from Mexico, make a living selling carnitas out of a pickup truck, and fifteen years later buy an empty parking lot with plans to build a restaurant. But Bertha’s husband was never able to see Tacos Uruapan as it stands today. Before the final blueprints were done, he died of cancer, leaving a parking lot, a carnitas recipe, and a dream in the hands of his wife and three children.
Bertha and Alejandro met in their home state of Michoacan, Mexico. When Alejandro came to the U.S. Bertha said he had $25 to his name. He bought a hamburger, a map, a tank of gas, and had a $1 left. “You know that saying ‘he’ll sell anything under the sun?’ That was my dad,” said Antonio. “He sold tostadas, he had a fruit stand, he sold anything he could.” Back in his hometown, a small town called Tanguancicuaro, Alejandro was a cook, and had a talent for making the region’s specialty, carnitas.
Antonio applied his entrepreneurial drive to making carnitas at home and selling them by the pound in a pickup truck throughout the East Bay. Five years later, Alejandro and Bertha bought their first real taco truck. Antonio, whose smile gets bigger as he tells stories about his dad, joked that the name Tacos Tanguancicuaro was too long and that the sign would have been too costly, so they decided on Tacos Uruapan, a larger city nearby.
In 1995, Alejandro bought the property on the corner of Huntwood Road and Industrial Parkway where Tacos Uruapan is today. They built a patio and stationed the truck while they planned to build a restaurant. After Alejandro’s death, Bertha, Antonio and the eldest brother, Alejandro Jr. opened the taqueria with an expanded menu and an eager following. “I don’t think any of us sat down that first year,” said Antonio.
A month before the one year anniversary of the opening, tragedy struck the family again: Alejandro Jr. was killed in a motorcycle accident. “We were a really good team, it was like we were a tripod,” said Antonio. “It was overwhelming, but we were able to do everything because we did it together.”
This year was Tacos Uruapan’s best year in business. They employ 18 people. Bertha manages and works the kitchen, and Antonio runs the front of the restaurant. Antonio’s 19-year-old daughter occasionally helps out at the restaurant. Their charitable cause, a homework incentive program that rewards school-age kids with free burritos, is in six different schools. As for their next step, Antonio is thinking about building out a store next to the restaurant. “He has his dad’s vision,” said Bertha with a smile.
