Tacos Neza x noissue

How can you make tacos even better? When they’re authentic and made with fresh and best-quality ingredients, of course! That’s what Tacos Neza, a family-owned Mexican food restaurant founded in 2019, is all about.

At Tacos Neza, they pride themselves on making tacos, burritos, fajitas, and many of your other favorite Mexican dishes from traditional recipes, earning them a place in a lot of people’s go-to Mexican food spot lists around Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles.

For this feature, we chatted with one of the members behind the brand, Antonio Coronado, about the historic and symbolic inspiration behind the name Tacos Neza, how they started the business, and how they use their noissue sustainable packaging essentials on all of their dishes. Read all about it only here!

Tell us a bit about your brand!

Hi, we're Tacos Neza, a family that moved from Mexico to Los Angeles about 6 years ago. Our name comes from our mom’s hometown, a city near the Mexico City metro area called Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl (Neza seemed a little easier to pronounce!).

Since we were starting a new life far from home, trying to use something that symbolizes our origin was an obvious choice. Besides, Nezahualcóyotl was a pre-Hispanic Mexican figure, and we think his presence and past exemplify the authenticity and ancestry we try to recreate with our food.

On top of it, we are in the heart of Hollywood inside the Ovation Hollywood Center, right next to the Walk of Fame, and we love the thought that one small part of us, our home country and heritage, reaches people from all over the world.

Tell us about the design for your packaging and how you’re using them?

Branding is of absolute essence for connecting with your customers; we think it is the final touch beyond the product to complete a great experience, which, in our case, is food. We love the concept of a modern Mexican brand that differentiates from the very vast Mexican food offerings in Los Angeles. So we started using a bold modern display font instead of the typical urban cursive used everywhere.

Then we had the design of the portrait of an ancient Mexican figure made in a very modern and joyful way, and this represented us as a fusion of the past and modernity. Then, for the colors, we went with a serious traditional green with a modern, joyful pink. When we saw all this put together, we immediately felt we had hit the nail on the head and that we could effectively communicate the essence of who we are.

As for how we use the branding products, we use two sizes of food-safe paper for our dine-in food trays. Since the dining deck is a common area, there's always people walking by and seeing what other people are eating, so having nice trays with our name and brand has translated into more potential customers. We also use the food-safe paper inside our to-go boxes and seal them with branded stickers of colorful Aztec icons, which we also use to differentiate the burritos inside the bag.

We also have a custom masking tape, which we thought was an incredible product to use for closing all the to-go bags and the boxes for catering orders. It is very important that the customer feels their order was all sealed and protected during delivery and also looks very cool. Finally, we have custom bakery bags which we use for tortilla chips and churros!

What made noissue a good fit for your packaging?

As a small business, your options are limited, but with very low minimums and a really intuitive platform, noissue really is a great option. It doesn't take long to be hooked on the company; we first bought the food paper and were really impressed with the quality. Then we looked into all their catalogs and were very excited about all the different opportunities we had to effectively communicate our brand.

On top of that, noissue takes a very serious approach to being an eco-friendly company and covering this very important need for businesses like ours in an ethical way. So far, we've been very pleased with the experience, the products, and the brand itself.