It was a grand reopening like they never expected.
When Roscoe’s Tacos reopened its doors in Greenwood, its loyal customers came flooding in. The line stretched out the door and around the building on a 90-degree July day. Customers waited for up to an hour to order their favorite tacos, burritos and nachos.
Roscoe and Rita Townsend first opened the Greenwood taco joint more than two decades ago, in 1996, and it got really busy really fast, they said. It became a staple in the community, and led to two more restaurants in Franklin and Southport.
But in March, the stress and financial strain of running three restaurants during the coronavirus pandemic caught up with Rita and Roscoe, they said. It was already difficult for them to manage all three locations, but when the pandemic started to impact their business, they worried about the safety of their employees and the financial hits they were taking. They announced on March 21 that Roscoe’s Tacos would close permanently.
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Facebook posts poured in from longtime fans, saddened by the news of the restaurant closing. The community rallied to raise money by selling shirts and buying leftover sauces from the shop, anything to help them keep it going, Rita said.
Then on July 25, Roscoe’s Tacos reopened its doors, and business has been booming ever since, they said.
"The first day was something Roscoe and I in our lives have never seen," Rita said. "My 27-28 years experience in food, I have never experienced the volume of people we had in this place. It was insane."
A crowd formed outside the door starting at 9 a.m. — an hour and a half before they opened — on the first weekend, Rita said. The lines did not die down all day, and service had to be cut off at 10 p.m., Roscoe said.
"I had to go out there and tell them to come back tomorrow," he said.
They thought the craze would slow after a few days, but it didn’t. For 15 days, continuous crowds flooded the Townsend’s little taco shack, Rita said. The couple processed about 6,400 orders in the first two weeks alone.
"It was nonstop for 15 days. For 15 days, I worked on the front line making food. My shortest shift was 10 hours," she said.
Business slowed a little in the last week, returning to a manageable number of customers. But there is still a consistent stream of orders coming in throughout the day, they said.
Many changes had to happen before they could reopen. That included repainting, putting in new ceiling tiles and updating the menu. The menu, known for its uniquely-named tacos like the Pecos Bill Burrito and the Paul Bunyan Taco, was simplified — a few items were dropped and all the prices increased slightly to help with the business’s financial strain, Roscoe and Rita said.
The restaurant also got a brand new point-of-sale system to process orders, which caused some headaches on the first day, Roscoe said. They called the company to fix the machine, and the employee fixing the system was surprised by the massive crowd at the restaurant.
“I told them there is a tidal wave of business coming … when we open the doors, that’s what’s going to happen, and they didn’t get that,” Roscoe said. “When the guy came in here, he said, ‘Oh man, I’ve never seen anything like this.’”
And with the ongoing pandemic, Roscoe’s Tacos has implemented a firm mask policy for all employees, a Plexiglass barrier around the entire front counter and a new hand sanitizer station at the front door.
Roscoe and Rita both take the pandemic seriously, and safety was a major deciding factor in whether to reopen, Rita said.
"I have asthma. I get pneumonia every year … when we were battling opening or staying closed, I told Kyla, my youngest daughter, I said, my biggest fear is that I’m going to get sick," Rita said. "That was the obstacle in my way of whether we should open. That was a hard one to get over. We’re doing it. We’re wearing our masks. We’re protecting ourselves. That’s the best we can do."
Signs are also posted requiring customers to wear masks inside when they are not eating, but employees will not deny anyone service for not wearing one due to safety concerns, Roscoe said. He does not want people not wearing masks without a legitimate medical reason, but he does not want to be responsible for enforcing it, he said.
"They feel very passionate about these things, and it’s not up to us to convince them. It’s their consequences, if something happens," Roscoe said. "I object to people complaining about people not wearing masks in our restaurant and putting it on Facebook. I object because that is happening everywhere, it’s not something that is happening here specifically."
The Townsend’s are glad to be open again, they said, and the overwhelming support is uplifting.
"It really lifted us. We knew it was going to be busy, but we didn’t realize that people cared that much," Roscoe said. "We’d like to thank everyone that has come out and given us support in every way they’ve given it."
