Life has come full circle for Pasco restaurant owners Cesar Trejo and Maria Peralta.

They once relied on the local Boys & Girls Clubs when their girls were young and they were trying to launch Trejo’s Mexican Restaurant. Now, their restaurant is a four-time champion of the Pasco Taco Crawl, a community event that turns its proceeds over to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Benton and Franklin Counties.

“The key about being a family business is teaching your kids how much it takes to run the business,” said Peralta through a translator. “It worked for us because they all know how to run a business even though they went in different directions now.”

Their family business, Trejo’s Mexican Restaurant, recently received the most votes to win the “Best Taco in Pasco” award during the 2025 Pasco Taco Crawl.  

This year’s win highlighted the eatery’s tacos al pastor, which features pork shoulder sliced from a vertical spit, similar to how shawarma is served.

Located at 1833 W. Court St. in Pasco in a modest strip mall, Trejo’s has either placed or won the title in the contest every year it has participated since 2018.

Mexican roots

Trejo, 58, and Peralta, 53, used their knowhow from owning a taqueria in Tijuana, Mexico, for 10 years before opening their Tri-City restaurant.

They left Tijuana almost 20 years ago because they felt it had gotten too dangerous to raise a young family there. After working the fields in Moses Lake, the couple opened Trejo’s at the corner of North 19th Avenue and West Court Street in 2009.

Originally from Mexico City, Trejo focuses on the meats while his wife creates the sauces and salsas, apropos for a native of Tabasco, Mexico. Peralta makes about 15 salsas, including a spicy peanut version, a customer favorite. The couple are behind the counter most days as the restaurant is open seven days a week.

“For the first three years, we worked the whole day, just my wife and me,” Trejo said. “We didn’t have any employees.”

They used that same strategy years later to survive the pandemic, with just the two of them filling mostly takeout orders when their business dropped by more than a third. They soldiered on and the Pasco Taco Crawl has helped them rebound in a big way, with their sales doubling since participating.

The counter service restaurant opens at 10 a.m. and serves a full menu, including breakfast burritos, tacos, gorditas, empanadas, enchiladas, tostadas and other Mexican specialties.

Trejo’s branched out in 2022 with a food truck at Summer’s Hub of Kennewick. It’s been a success as they’re selling twice as much as sales at the Pasco restaurant despite a limited menu.

Trejo’s won an award for best truck in the pavilion and already committed to opening a second truck at the newest Hub location being built near Gesa Stadium on Burden Boulevard. He hopes to open that location by the end of the summer.

Calling themselves a taco “factory,” the family became a burrito factory in early June for Pasco High School’s graduation, cranking out 650 burritos.

To serve the first plate by 8 a.m., five people began working at 1 a.m. to stuff, wrap and roll for the masses. It was an early wake-up call just hours after their youngest daughter collected her diploma from Pasco High.

It’s also the largest order they’ve had so far, though the family frequently works with other community organizations like the Tri-Cities Diversity & Inclusion Council.

“The biggest reward from being in business and the taco crawls has been seeing our kids be able to go to school, grow up and be somebody,” Peralta said through a translator. “The trust of the community has also been such a reward for all of our hard work.” This includes pride for their oldest daughter who earned a Master of Education degree at a school on the east coast and has now settled in Oregon. Their youngest, who works some shifts at the family business, hopes to go into business administration.

The crawl

The restaurant owners attribute much of their continued success to hard work and the taco crawl, started in 2016 by community volunteers like Emily Maloney, whose title is “taco boss.” The event brought awareness to the food options and other offerings around central Pasco.

“My husband had the idea that it would be fun to do like a pub crawl but with tacos,” Maloney said. “And because it was tacos, it needed to be longer because people would get too full.”

They tested it out with a proof of concept using people from Fuse SPC and launched the event the following year.

Today, participants buy a booklet for $35 in advance, or $40 at the start, and they’re guaranteed 20 tacos, one from each of the 20 Pasco establishments participating during a two-week window.

“The goal was just to get people here,” Maloney said. “The best taco in Pasco was really fun, but for the committee, our goal was to build up the businesses. So, what’s happening with (the success of) Trejo’s is exactly what our goal was, to get people coming back to them because we know that there can be a barrier with the river and we wanted to invite folks over.”

Through a translator, Peralta said, “Not a lot of people want to come into Pasco from Richland, but they do for the taco crawl. This kind of gives them an open door to come check the food out. Even after 15 years in business, a lot of people are still coming in for the first time.”

The awareness of the event has grown, and Trejo was surprised to see a video promoting his win had been viewed more than 350,000 times on Instagram.

Maloney said people are traveling from outside the area to attend the taco crawl, including a Seattle business owner known for closing his chiropractic office for a week to take part.

The crawl’s organizers recognize the economic impact the event brings to the community during the weeks leading up to Cinco de Mayo, and it’s their hope people might buy additional menu items when trading in their taco vouchers at the point of sale, plus come back long after the crawl is over to continue patronizing restaurants and other businesses in Pasco.

At least one business had to stop participating following its notoriety from the event. It had too many customers already and couldn’t also fulfill orders for the taco crawlers.

Trejo’s had a 100% increase in sales in the first weeks after the taco crawl. The owners have learned to weather the bump in business and make it a priority to engage with the hundreds of new customers, eliciting feedback and making sure everyone feels welcome.

Trejo dreams up a different taco to offer each year and the couple take a lot of pride in the “Best Taco in Pasco” title along with displaying the whimsical turtle-themed trophies that come along with it. This year’s trophy is the largest and was donated by Columbia Basin College’s manufacturing program.

Each of the 20 establishments participating in the crawl are reimbursed for the purchases made using a voucher.

Nonprofit gets proceeds

This year, organizers sold about 850 books and said people ate their way through two-thirds of the vouchers. Whatever money is left after paying out expenses to organize the event is donated to the Boys & Girls Club of Benton and Franklin Counties, which has received about $10,000 a year from the event, amounting to over $90,000 since the crawl first began.

“The goal is to keep the money in Pasco, so this money stays at our 12 sites that we have here in Pasco, which is where we have our roots as well,” said Meggan Tjarks of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Benton and Franklin Counties.

“We opened our doors in Pasco in 1986 and the money from the Pasco Taco Crawl stays here with our traditional and after-school programs, including programs that help with homework, sports and mental health,” she said.

Aiming to sell about 1,000 books each year keeps it manageable for the restaurants also. Organizers note the value, which amounts to less than $2 for a taco in 2025 for books purchased in advance. Businesses have the flexibility to offer what they want for the reimbursement price.

“Some families choose not to buy books for their kids and just buy tacos because they don’t think they’ll eat all of them,” Maloney said. “I’ve always bought books for my kids. I figure even if they don’t eat it, it’s a donation to the Boys & Girls Clubs.”

“The biggest takeaway from this event is that there’s zero waste,” Tjarks said. “Your money is going to the right places because you’re supporting local businesses. And, even if you don’t eat the tacos, you’re still supporting the local nonprofit that gives back to the community where families run businesses, and their children attend clubs and get support from our resources. Teens often grow up, come back and still support the community.”

To highlight the partnership, clubhouse kids promoted the Pasco Taco Crawl on social media this year. “They were really excited about it,” Tjarks said.

Best taco voting is done at a neutral location, which encourages taco eaters to visit yet another business in Pasco. This year, ballots were dropped at Café con Arte, a coffee shop and art gallery on West Columbia Street.

The 16-day event gets support from the Pasco Hispanic Chamber which promotes the event and sells booklets.

“In the two weeks before we started selling booklets, we went around and ate tacos,” laughed Raul Contreras with the chamber. “So, we did the hardest job, but we were documenting every stop we went, and we posted on social media.”

The event itself is also award-winning, receiving five honors from the Washington Festivals and Events Administration Annual Awards.

“We were super excited about that,” Maloney said. “Competing against all the different events across the state is much harder than a regional award.”Also riding the wave of the 700 visitors from this year’s crawl, Trejo’s and its 14 employees across Pasco and Kennewick look forward to their next expansion, aiming to open the second food truck in August.

Trejo’s Mexican Restaurant in Pasco is open 10 a.m.-9 p.m. every day but Sunday, when it closes at 7 p.m. The food truck at Summer’s Hub is open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.