Taco Bus Opens Cafe In Downtown Tampa

Taco Bus, one of Tampa's most beloved food trucks, has ditched the wheels, calling downtown Tampa home.

Celebrating the storefront restaurant's grand opening on January 25th, Taco Bus' new downtown location at 505 N. Franklin St. brings about the restaurant's third location. The original still sits, as a bus, at 913 E. Hillsborough Ave. while a second wheeled location opened in St. Petersburg at 2324 Central Ave. nearly one year ago.

“We're getting busier and busier and we figured it made sense to kind of disburse things around,” says Aviva Bowman, Taco Bus' marketing director. “Downtown is a great location with so many businesses. We know a lot of people would like to visit us for lunch but don't have time, so this is really great because it's a run in, run out kind of thing.”

Trying to incorporate as much as possible from the other two locations, the downtown Tampa location features giant pictures of the Hillsborough Ave. and St. Pete buses, even making an attempt to keep with the original bus theme.

“We actually built a big bus that's the entire width of the storefront,” Bowman says. “It's huge, yellow and looks the same as the other two buses.”

As one of the only walk-up window restaurants in downtown Tampa, the new Taco Bus location features old favorites including conchinita pibil, pollo, barbacoa and various vegan specialties. Sure to keep the menu the same as the original location, the only thing different about downtown Tampa's “bus” is the incorporation of fountain drinks.

“Downtown Tampa is awesome and hopefully people will visit from South Tampa and Channelside,” Bowman says. “We'll be open 24 hours on Fridays and Saturdays to try to bring people in. We'll see how that goes.”

In addition, Downtown Tampa's Taco Bus will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays

As far as any plans to further expand? Bowman's keeping her lips sealed.

“We have some plans, but they're under wraps right now,” Bowman says.

Writer: Alexis Quinn Chamberlain
Source: Aviva Bowman, Taco Bus