The first useful object at Condado Tacos is not a taco. It is a pencil. At the table, a diner confronts a check-off sheet of shells, proteins, toppings and sauces, then marks a path through the possibilities. The ritual looks almost comically analog in an age of kiosks. It is also a tidy explanation of the company: Condado turns abundance into a form, lets the customer finish the product and keeps the party at the table.
The approach has traveled far from the original Short North restaurant that founder Joe Kahn opened with partners in Columbus in 2014. Public company materials now count more than 50 restaurants in 10 states. Condado calls its format “next-gen casual,” a useful phrase for the gap it occupies. The food has fast-casual modularity, but the experience retains servers, cocktails, loud murals and the option to sit for another round.
This is not a company making a claim on traditional Mexican cooking. It is a Midwestern restaurant chain built around playful combinations and group utility. The distinction matters. An independent taqueria may win on regional specificity; Chipotle may win on throughput; Taco Bell may win on price and ubiquity. Condado is trying to solve the Friday-night veto: one table, six appetites, a vegan, a meat lover, somebody avoiding gluten and two people who mostly came for margaritas.
The menu is a user interface
Kahn came to Columbus after working in restaurants for decades and helping create Cleveland’s Barrio concept. In an interview before Condado’s opening, he described Columbus as a national testing ground. His initial format borrowed the logic of a sushi order sheet: decide on a shell, add a protein, continue down the page. A diner could construct something familiar or stack a double-decker shell with Thai chili tofu, red cabbage and an assertive sauce.
The clever part is that apparent freedom rests on a controlled system. Tacos, burritos, bowls and nachos share an ingredient vocabulary. House suggestions reduce decision fatigue. The menu can accommodate dietary preferences without requiring a separate concept for each one. A company nutrition note sensibly warns that shared fryer oil means some items may not be completely free of allergens, but vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free markers make the selection process unusually visible.
The Condado loop
As Condado grew, it also centralized much of the invisible labor. Restaurant Business reported that after consistency problems appeared around the fifth store, the company opened a 7,000-square-foot commissary that prepared 85 percent of menu items. Plans later called for a 26,000-square-foot operation. That move is the quiet counterweight to the freewheeling menu: complexity gets handled upstream so restaurants can assemble it reliably in smaller kitchens.
Centralize the food. Localize the walls.
The rooms run in the opposite direction. Condado commissions artists in each market to cover restaurant walls with place-specific characters and stories. In Charlotte, one opening featured work by 12 local artists. The murals do several jobs without looking like a strategy memo: they give each location a visual address, offer artists paid exposure, create social-media backdrops and soften the stamped-out feeling that can accompany a chain.
That tension - standardized core, variable expression - is the most portable idea in the business. The restaurant does not have to manufacture local credibility through reclaimed wood and old photographs. It can let people who live in a city put their own marks on the room. The company supplies the canvas and a recognizable level of visual volume; the artists supply the specificity.
Condado’s published values include inclusion, humility, fun, commitment and accountability. Its careers pitch promises no uniforms and room to “be yourself.” Such language is common in hospitality recruiting, where flexible schedules and turnover pressure make culture part of the product. Here, the murals and customer customization at least make the promise visible. Individuality is not confined to a values page; it is staged on the wall and rehearsed in every order.
The margarita became media
Food creates frequency; alcohol expands the occasion. Condado’s bar program had carried versions of the same margaritas since 2014. In 2025, the company rebuilt the list around six combinations including Strawberry Yuzu, Dragon Fruit Habanero and Prickly Pear Lavender, with matching spirit-free versions. A three-week Michigan test produced a reported 20 percent increase in drink sales. Color was part of the development brief because the drinks needed to read on social platforms as well as at the bar.
The next campaign pushed the drink into a game. Condado made a white “Mystery Marg,” asked loyalty members to guess its flavor in the app and offered five winners tacos for a year. Nearly 2,000 entries arrived. Chief Marketing Officer Sara Kear later reported that the drink generated 70 percent higher sales volume and a 177 percent higher return rate than the average limited-time margarita. Average order value and ticket size rose too, she wrote, though the company did not disclose dollar sales.
This is the more instructive version of menu innovation. A flavor alone can be copied. A flavor attached to suspense, an app action, a table debate and a reason to return becomes a small piece of entertainment. It is product development and customer research wearing the same salt rim.
Loyalty without the coupon trance
Condado’s rewards program is supplied by PAR Punchh, which combines mobile ordering, promotions, surveys, segmentation and challenge campaigns. The “Buds With Benefits” structure has included tiered rewards, a holiday playlist for top members and invitations to help test menu ideas. Those benefits are modest, but they give regulars status and access rather than reducing every relationship to a discount.
The vendor’s published case study reported a 44 percent retention rate, a 37 percent year-over-year increase in loyalty sales and a 20 percent quarter-over-quarter increase in referrals. In 2026, PAR named Condado marketers Evan Pardue and Pierson Matejovsky its Marketers of the Year, citing 75 percent growth in loyalty participation and 55 percent growth in loyalty-driven sales over two years. Vendor case studies naturally select favorable outcomes, but the mechanics are worth noticing: roughly 20 segmented challenges encouraged specific menu purchases, visits at different times and in-restaurant behavior.
For a chain entering cities where nobody grew up with it, the app does some of the work that habit performs for an old neighborhood restaurant. It creates a reason for visit two, gathers a response, then makes visit three more informed. Catering extends the same system into offices, weddings, tailgates and parties through taco bars, nacho bars and boxed formats. Gift cards and direct ordering add other routes back to the brand.
Where Condado fits
The company is private. The Beekman Group completed an undisclosed recapitalization in February 2020, when Condado operated 15 restaurants across four states. By 2024 it had reached 50 locations in 10 states and hired former Portillo’s operating chief Derrick Pratt as CEO. Kahn moved into the founder and chief innovation officer role. That division makes sense for the next stage: one executive works on expansion, processes and people development; the founder keeps a hand on the combinations that make the system feel less mechanical.
Growth also raises the obvious risk. A local mural cannot rescue slow service, and a playful sauce cannot compensate for inconsistency. The competitive field is crowded from both ends: independent taquerias offer deeper culinary roots, while national fast-casual brands bring scale, digital convenience and aggressive value. Condado’s answer is not to beat every rival at its own game. It combines enough speed, enough service, enough spectacle and enough dietary range to become an easy group decision.
That positioning also explains why catering matters. A build-your-own taco bar is the restaurant translated into an office or wedding: hosts get a colorful spread, guests solve their own preferences and the company sells a larger order without adding dining-room seats. Next-day ordering and packaged setup turn a social product into a logistics product. It is less glamorous than a lavender margarita, but it reaches customers at moments when the alternative is often a generic sandwich tray.
The model is best understood as a hospitality stack. Modular ingredients solve choice. The commissary solves consistency. Servers and margaritas solve occasion. Local art solves sameness. Rewards solve memory. Each layer is ordinary on its own. Arranged together, they explain how a pencil, a crowded page and a very loud room traveled from Columbus to more than 50 addresses.