Why the world’s most beautiful Taco Bell staffed up during the pandemic

Nestled 75 feet from the ocean on Pacifica State Beach, it looks more like a SoCal bungalow than a fast-food place with $1.29 tacos. The beach’s gentle waves lightly crash against the sand behind the Taco Bell, burritos make their way out of a surfer to-go window on their wrap-around porch, and there’s a surfboard rack out front, because, of course, there is.

I’m here on a Friday around lunchtime with my 9-year-old daughter to check in on the state of this fast-food institution in the midst of a nearly 7-month-old pandemic (and maybe to snag a couple Doritos Locos tacos).

To absolutely no one’s surprise, we’re not the only ones who had this idea. My daughter counts 91 surfers in the water, three dogs and about a dozen blanket-equipped families spread out across the beach (including one with a dad hilariously working on his laptop inside of a makeshift towel tent).

We park and make our way along the beach toward our Fire-Sauce-stocked destination, stopping to sprint through a colony of seagulls, find three crab claws of various sizes (which have to live in my pocket until we get home – “they like it better in there, Daddy”) and say hi to the doggos.

“Can we use the burrito window?” my daughter asks.

“Uh, yeah we can,” I tell her.

We order all the tacos, destroy them in record time, and then enjoy a cool, late September breeze before James Aman joins us.

Aman oversees four different Taco Bells in the Bay Area (one in San Ramon, the Cantina one in SoMa, one in Daly City, and this one), but hints that he may like spending time “overseeing” this one the most.

“Oh, absolutely, it’s kind of like not being at work. It’s beautiful,” he says. “People from all over the world come here because they saw it online, and I’m still noticing that. But there are a lot of people from the Bay Area, the East Bay, who have never been here, and now they’re coming here for this.”

He motions generally, his hands extending out farther and farther because there’s a lot of “this” to cover in this little Bay Area oasis.

I find out pretty quickly he’s not wrong about the people coming here for it.

Diamond Duenskie, a 20-something Instacart shopper from Campbell, Calif., and her friend Josipa Shimich, who’s visiting from Arizona, drove 50 minutes to get here – literally just to see the beachfront Taco Bell.

“We honestly came to check it out,” Shimich says. “I mean, Taco Bell by the beach.”

She gives a sort of knowing, ‘how could you not?’ look.

“I don’t know why I’ve never been here,” Duenskie adds in between taco bites. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s very pretty – great spot for a Taco Bell.”

We meet a half dozen other people who say basically the same thing, including Danny Butler III, who lives a quarter mile from the beach and is the only Black man surfing at the beach today.

“This beach is good for beginners, and I love that everyone is cool and everyone is nice. I felt welcome here, being a Black man in America, I felt welcome here. The cool thing about this beach though is Taco Bell. Now listen, the Taco Bell sells margaritas. I said mar-ga-ri-tas.”

He laughs, and then starts talking about his lengthy order – there’s a hard shell taco, a gordita, a Mexican pizza, a steak quesadilla and at least one other thing he can’t remember.

No one’s thoughts are fixated on global pandemics or elections or wildfires, they’re instead fixated on community. And really cheap tacos.

“I’ve been surfing here for over 20 years,” says Laura Miyano, who lives in San Francisco. “We don’t go to the Taco Bell anymore, but years ago, I would go there because I had $2, or needed a cup of coffee real quick, but it got real fancy over the last five years. It does have the best view I think in all of Northern California, though.”

The coffee piece is harder to come by nowadays – they’ve been forced to kill breakfast (a favorite of a lot of surfers) due to decreased morning traffic, but they’ve actually staffed up – a rarity in the Bay Area as the pandemic has ravaged the hospitality industry and forced closure after closure across the Bay Area.

“We actually had to increase staffing,” Aman says. “Because of business and also ensuring we can take care of the guests because there’s no self service anymore. And that adds an extra element for us staffing-wise.”

That larger staff has had literally everything thrown at them since reopening. Because of the potential for crowds, the beach and beach parking were closed Labor Day weekend and Fourth of July weekend. They were closed during some particularly bad wildfire smoke days (including the orange sky day), and have also been impacted by the need to keep Highway 1 clear for emergency personnel.

“It’s challenging, but we completely understand and want to do what’s right for the community,” Aman says.

On this Friday, them just being open, and being the most beautiful Taco Bell in the world, feels plenty right.

The World’s Most Beautiful Taco Bell is located at 5200 CA-1 in Pacifica, CA. It opens at 9 a.m.