Popular food-truck fleet adds Glyndon brick-and-mortar to its family business

GLYNDON, Minn. — Lupe Vega remembers the very first time she opened a taco stand.

The Vegas lived in Ada, Minnesota, which was hosting a “Fun in the Flatlands” event in the summer of 1994. So Lupe and husband, Jesse Jr., packed up their kids and headed to the city park. She set up shop on a park picnic table and cooked the meat on the family’s Weber grill. Her kids helped out by pulling pop out of the cooler and wiping off the cans before they handed them to customers. Her “cash register” was a paper bag.

It wasn’t an elaborate set-up, but nobody minded. The customers kept coming and that shopping bag filled with cash.

From those humble beginnings, the Vega family has built Lupe’s Tacos, a successful business known for its two Tex-Mex food trucks and a third truck specializing in pizza and wings. Now they’ve also added a brick and mortar to their family business. On Nov. 8, they opened the doors on a Glyndon building that once housed Miguels, another Mexican restaurant.

They planned for a soft opening, but the customers flowed into the little storefront at 10 Partridge Ave N., at such a constant pace that there was nothing soft about it.

Jesse Vega III, Lupe and Jesse Jr.’s son, said their food truck regulars were excited to hear they’d opened a storefront.

“They didn’t want us to stop our food truck, that’s for sure,” said Jesse III, who grew up working in the family business. “We made a promise to them that the food trucks would continue to run over Fargo-Moorhead, but essentially now you can get us six days a week without having to track us down.”

It all started with Lupe, who was born in Carrizo Springs, Texas, about 42 miles from the Mexican border.

Lupe grew up cooking her mother’s Tex-Mex recipes, which she often customized and made her own. When she and Jesse Jr. moved to Ada with their young family, she worked for years as the school cook.

“I was a cafeteria lady. I used to cook for 600 kids, so I know how to massive-cook,” she said.

The side hustle selling tacos began as a way to pay for school clothes or extras, Jesse said. Each year, their food booth grew bigger and fancier.

In 2016, Lupe was diagnosed with stage 5 kidney disease. After getting the necessary treatment, she sat down with Jesse Jr., and told him her plan: If she quit her cafeteria job, she could make just as much money selling tacos and could take days off when she didn’t feel well.

Everyone agreed it was a good idea.

They got an old camper, which they gutted and converted into a kitchen.

“It was the first food truck we had,” Lupe recalled. “We took it to the (Polk County) fair, with no labels on it, no decals, nothing. It was white. We made $37 and I cried.”

They recruited a local artist to airbrush their business name on it and literally paid him with food. “The next day I came and it was taco city,” Lupe said, sweeping her hands above her as if she’d just seen her name in lights. “Lupe’s Tacos.”

In 2018, Jesse III convinced them to bring their truck to Fargo, where there were more people, events and opportunities to sell good Tex-Mex food. “As soon as we came to Fargo, he took over and it just expanded,” Lupe said. “He’s a talker.”

The family is now known for their two bright yellow Lupe’s trucks as well as Chuy’s Pizza and Wings truck.

The pizza and wings truck adopted Jesse Jr’s nickname. “He was very much a part of this business,” Jesse III said of his dad, adding that he is the builder, thinker and planner behind the operation.

Then again, they all have their jobs. Jesse III smokes the chicken, beef and other meats for their dishes and manages the overall operation. Lupe provides the recipes and trains them all on how to make them. Brother Justin recently moved home from Colorado Springs to provide extra help.

Sister Erica is their taco traffic controller, keeping things coordinated between customer and the kitchen.

“I’m always the front taco person, so I talk to everybody,” she said. “If you don’t have a strong person in the window, the rest of the line is going to get messed up. So I pace the line outside, I pace everybody in here. I have small conversations with (each customer) and get to know them.”

And what keeps them coming back, especially at a time when Fargo-Moorhead seems to have as many Mexican restaurants as car washes? “Their food is Mexico-Mexico,” Lupe said. “Our food is Tex-Mex. Mostly it’s our different dishes and the fact we like to deal with people. We have a lot of customers like that — who come back every year. You get to know them.”

They decided to add the Glyndon building a few years ago, because they needed more space to store and cook food.

With its arched windows and stucco exterior, the little building still looked like a Mexican restaurant — but that was only from the outside.

After Miguel’s left, it was reconfigured several times to serve as a tattoo shop, a health-shake store and even a garage and car lot. “It used to be Duke’s Auto,” Jesse III said, laughing. “He’s actually our landlord now. He said, ‘I built a car in there.’”

It took them several years to renovate the building because they didn’t want to borrow money from a bank. “We paid for everything ourselves,” Lupe said.

Over time, the plans for the space morphed into a full-blown restaurant, with seating for 36.

“The booths are from Taco Johns, so they’ve still got life left in them,” Jesse III said.

Today, people who stop by their Glyndon eatery will find many of the items they offer in their trucks.

That includes a honey sriracha chicken street taco that was a taco showdown winner at Fargo Brewery’s Dia Del Taco Fest a few years ago. Lupe’s Tacos also won Best Taco Truck of the Red River Valley honors in 2021.

There’s also a grinder burrito, which is stuffed with a full pound of food, and their popular loaded nachos, topped with homemade queso sauce.

To finish it off, they offer bunuelos — a deep-fried tortilla tossed in cinnamon and sugar and drizzled with caramel and chocolate.

“We put our spin on it and cut it into chips,” Jesse III said. “It’s super-light, super-snacky. Just a nice, little sweet at the end.”

They want people to know their successful food trucks will keep on truckin’ for vendor shows, county fairs and special occasions like graduations. They’ve even had to hire extra help.

“We’ve come a long way from the park,” Jesse Jr. said.

Lupe’s Tacos store hours are from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays.

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