Los Tacos No. 1 serves 1,200 NYC customers a day. Its CEO is betting private equity can help it scale.

• Los Tacos No. 1 came under fire on social media after receiving a private equity investment.
• Some fans feared the beloved New York City Tijuana-style taco chain would lose its iconic flavor.
• The chain's CEO told Business Insider they will scale cautiously, preserving quality and low prices.

Christian Pineda, CEO and cofounder of Los Tacos No. 1, couldn't fall asleep.

He was caught in a scroll of enraged social media posts. The storm of customer indignation followed news last month that the beloved New York City taco chain had received an investment from the private equity firm TSG Consumer. The internet seemed convinced their favorite carne asada and adobada tacos would lose their quality, and Pineda had not expected the reaction.

To remedy the situation, he said he felt it was his duty to address his customers directly. He woke up at 4:30 the next morning to clear the air.

"No, we're not going to start charging extra for guac. We're not switching to horse meat. And no, we're definitely not messing with the tacos," read the Instagram post published September 4.

"I wanted to keep it simple, honest, and comical too at the same time," Pineda told Business Insider. "I saw it as inspiring, honestly, to really prove our customers wrong — that private equity is not always bad."

Colin Welch, managing director and head of New York at TSG Consumer, said the backlash among some underscored what TSG saw in the taco business to begin with: a "cultlike following" customer base protective of the food, and an experience that made Los Tacos a "New York institution."

"It's our responsibility to show those skeptics that it's going to be exactly the same Los Tacos experience, and that nothing's going to change for the worse," Welch said. "We got to show them, not tell them, and that'll happen over time."

The PE firm, founded in 1986 and with $14 billion in assets under management, also has investments in food names Pura Vida Miami, Crumbl, and Dutch Bros Coffee. TSG declined to disclose the terms of the deal or the amount it paid for its investment in or stake in Los Tacos No. 1, which opened in 2013.

Welch said the firm plans to let Pineda and his team run the show, while TSG will provide guidance on future expansion. He pointed to Pura Vida Miami, a lifestyle café chain founded in Miami. It grew from locations in two states to seven since TSG announced its minority stake in 2025.

Pineda said the chain focused on finding an investor that would allow Los Tacos No. 1 to scale in a "cautiously smart" way. With 10 locations in Manhattan and a sister location, Los Mariscos, at Chelsea Market, the taco chain wants to continue expanding into other boroughs and markets. It's looking to open a new location in Brooklyn before the end of the year, and another three new locations are planned to open in 2027.

The PE investment comes after 13 years of growth in New York City — a journey that began with three architects and the search for a good taco.

Selling an experience

Pineda and his co-founders, Tyler Sanders and Kyle Cameron, moved from California to New York City in 2010. They lived together in a one-bedroom apartment in the West Village, where Pineda and Sanders, both architects, spent days knocking on doors to find jobs. They found jobs, but there was one thing they could not find wherever they looked — a good taco.

The three men had been raised on Tijuana-style tacos. Pineda was born in San Diego but was raised between there and Tijuana, where his parents are from. Meanwhile, Sanders and Cameron were born in Brawley, California, a city near the border with Mexicali.

Thus, the "No ticket, No taco" order model was born. Customers get a ticket from the cashier, and then have to find and give it to one of the many "taqueros," or cooks, working at once. They can then give the taquero specific instructions for their tacos and watch them prepare the food in front of them. The interactive experience is designed to induce an organized chaos, brought to life by Mexican folk music in the background as the staff speaks in Spanish among themselves.

Growing and scaling a business in NYC

It's no secret that the Big Apple is expensive, and as the cost of living increases, so do expenses for businesses like Los Tacos No. 1.

Since they opened, annual revenue has grown by around 30% each year, and they currently serve about 1,200 customers per day, with an average check of about $20, Pineda said.

In recent months, the expenses that have increased the most are beef, limes, avocados, and tomatoes, Pineda said. Beef prices were 5.9% higher in August 2026 than in August 2025, and they are forecast to increase a total of 9.4% this year, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

To adjust to these increases, the chain keeps other expenses "tight, lean and sustainable," and will not raise prices or cut quality because of a temporary spike, Pineda said. To keep up, the business has to "be efficient in everything else," Pineda said.

"Our idea was always you need to have the best taco and the cheapest taco," Pineda said. "Our carne asada started at $3.50 in 2013. Now our carne asada tacos are $5.95 after 13 years, so we take pride in that."

Pineda sees the new partnership with TSG Consumer as an opportunity to grow the company while preserving its quality, and maybe going public one day, debuting by ringing the opening bell on a stock exchange.

"We want to be in a room where we're with people who have done 100, 200, 1,000 locations. We haven't done that," he said. "We partner up with them because of their knowledge and the people that they've worked with, the brands that they've helped with — a big goal has been if we can ring the bell — that'd be amazing."