For Mission Taco Joint’s seventh location, our design team was tasked with converting a 12,000 sf neighborhood grocery store into a restaurant that would appeal to adults  and families with children, all while evolving the client’s visual brand in a new way that honors the neighborhood. For visual simplicity, we kept the palette simple: wood, steel, and concrete with strategic pops of the client’s branded colors.

Dining is confined to the west side of the restaurant, front to back. The room beyond the bar was brightened with a large skylight, and a large private dining room features custom steel doors to close it off when the restaurant isn’t busy.  

Meanwhile, a portion of the space adjacent to the kitchen was turned into a tortilla production facility to supply all seven restaurants with fresh tortillas. In front of the production area, we carved out an arcade with its own bar to provide entertainment for singles and families alike. 

Throughout the restaurant, our team worked closely with ownership to infuse local art in strategic areas. The crowning piece – Peat Wollaeger’s nosepiece of a CSX train that had been wrecked in 2012 – has been installed in the front dining room emerging from a locally-known tunnel, a reference to the neighborhood’s vibrant train culture.