Tiki Taco plans to double its restaurant count in 2025, starting at one busy Olathe corner

A rapidly scaling taco spot with a trio of locations across the metro is adding an Olathe restaurant this March. Four more Kansas City-area eateries are already in the works with the partners at Tiki Taco hungry for regional expansion — even if it isn’t yet on the table.

KC Burrito from Tiki Taco

“I’m stoked,” said Richard Wiles, one of six leaders behind the scenes at the popular fast casual taco chain. “We have a lot of good momentum and brand recognition.”

This week Tiki Taco’s team plans to sign a lease for a new location in Olathe Pointe Shopping Center, 14947 W. 119th St., Olathe, scheduled to open in early March.They also have letters of intent to open restaurants in Lee’s Summit, Liberty, Parkville and south Overland Park, spacing the openings out from March through September of 2025 — if not hampered by weather, supply chain issues, permitting and other setbacks. 

Tiki Taco’s mission is to offer “cheap and tasty eats, dished out fast and fresh.”

It specializes in Southern California-style tacos that range from traditional flavors to Polynesian/Thai fusion. 

The eye-catching brand’s most popular orders are its traditional street tacos and the KC Burrito stuffed with curly fries. Its avocado taco is hand-battered and fried to order, then topped with purple cabbage, pico de gallo, queso fresco and Baja sauce. A Thai fried chicken taco boasts hand-battered fried chicken with cabbage and jalapeno slaw, crema and Thai chili sauce on a flour tortilla.

“Part of our culture is inclusivity so we try to offer something for everybody,” said Eric Knott, Tiki Taco’s new CEO and partner, noting customers come in all ages and from all walks of life.

Building to a busy year

Just seven years ago, Tiki Taco was a humble spot on 39th Street’s “Restaurant Row” with a few seats and a walk-up window.

Then new owners took over.

They expanded the dining room and added a few chef-driven menu items, like spicy pork burritos and Korean beef tacos.

Tiki Taco on Troost Avenue; photo courtesy of Tiki Taco

Then new locations popped up on Troost and in downtown Overland Park. 

Fast-casual trade publication, QSR Magazine put the brand on its “The 40/40 List for 2024: America’s Hottest Startup Fast Casuals” — a recognition pointing to fast casual restaurants “ready to take on whatever comes next in the post-pandemic era.” Tiki Taco was the only Kansas City company to make the list. 

Now it’s making good on that listing. 

In what QSR called a “significant milestone,” Tiki Taco brought in Knott, known for helming a Florida high-growth chain, as its new chief executive.

The six partners — brothers Lyndon and Lindsey Wade and their mother, Judy Rush; along with Knott; Wiles, formerly co-owner of Westport Cafe & Bar; and Jason Kinslow, formerly with the local Bread & Butter Concepts restaurant group, and now director of operations — are self-financing the venture.

As Tiki Taco scales, the team is looking for spaces of about 2,000 square feet with a patio seating 10 to 15 people.

“Keep the locations small, offer a lot of delivery, a pick up window,” Wiles said. 

Future locations might have pickup lanes and they will introduce an app next year for preordering. 

About a month or two before a brick-and-mortar restaurant opens, they station their food truck in the area — passing out free tacos to build awareness and excitement. Each manager is to act like the mayor of that town, to be an active member of that community, they described.

Tiki Taco also is in discussions to open concessions at pro sports and college arenas. Once the brand is strong in the metro, they will consider expanding regionally in 2026, but not too quickly.

Knott goes by the adage: “Crawl, walk, run.”

“A lot of concepts make that mistake when they go too quickly,” he said. “We’re very busy, very busy. It is going to be a fun year.”

Carefully crafted cuisine

Tiki Taco’s menu showcases nachos, quesadillas, bowls, vegetarian tacos, and a variety of sides including street corn, cilantro lime rice, refried beans, and chips and queso. It even offers beer, margaritas, horchata, and Mexican sodas. 

Monthly specials include the recent hibachi burrito, the current chicken mole taco, and December’s birria ramen. 

The Cheeseburger in Paradise — a burrito stuffed with hamburger, curly fries, onion, lettuce, tomato and house-made tomato-mayo sauce — was so popular as a special it is now on the permanent menu.

Also in the works: a new loyalty program and dessert specials.

As part of the loyalty program, customers accrue points that they can redeem for food or merchandise. Merchandise styles change every couple of months (currently a Miami Vice theme) and can include trucker hats, T-shirts, hoodies, crop tops, and sweatshirts. 

Loyalty customers also can taste specials before they are available to the public.

Tiki Taco’s December special: Birria Ramen

How they built loyalty to last

The first Tiki Taco opened in 2017 at 1710 W. 39th St. — later purchased by the Wade brothers and their mother in 2020 with Wiles eventually joining as a consultant for the menu, as well as site selection and development for new locations.

Richard Wiles, Judy Rush, Lindsey Wade and Lyndon Wade, in 2022 outside the in-the-works Tiki Taco Troost Avenue location; photo courtesy of Tiki Taco

The owners remodeled a freestanding coffeehouse at 5400 Troost Ave., opening Tiki Taco there in 2022. They added a downtown Overland Park restaurant at 7514 W. 80th St. earlier this year.

Knott, who held leadership positions at Outback Steakhouse before joining PDQ Chicken (People Dedicated to Quality) — a Florida-based premium quick-service brand that grew from one to 70 locations under his 14 year helm — left a secure job for the challenge of building another brand.

His criteria? A company with three to seven units and great owners, “good human beings, genuine,” he said.

“And I was looking at tacos and margaritas,” Knott said. “I’ve never met someone who didn’t like tacos.”

Since joining Tiki Taco July 1, he has been standardizing such operations as automating accounting, scheduling, and payroll. That frees up the 80 employees to focus on the food and customers. 

Tiki Taco dropped some of its less popular items and is focused on increasing the quality of its greatest hits. It now uses rib eye instead of sirloin, has new slicers to carve pork in-house for its al pastor, and — while it previously ordered carnitas from a local company — now makes the frequently ordered dish from scratch in-house.

But Tiki Taco still gets its tortillas from Kansas City’s Yoli Tortilleria for its James Beard Award winning quality. 

“We are constantly improving the quality of what we do. Evaluating everything we do to see if there are better or higher quality ways of doing that,” Knott said.

Knott introduced the dessert of the month, the current Apple of My Pie (cheesecake chimichanga with baked Fuji apples).

“We test the market with the latest trends,” he said. “It gives the team a lot of fun, the guests a lot of fun.”

Because any Mexican restaurant can be considered a competitor — from Torchy’s Tacos to local mom-and-pops serving authentic cuisine — Tiki Taco focuses “on the basics. High quality food and really good service in a very trendy, vibey atmosphere,” he said.

The brand also remembers the community that supported it, the partners emphasized.

During specially selected “Giveback Day” events, 20 percent of sales at a given location are donated to an area school. December’s promotion is set for the Overland Park location to benefit the nearby Overland Park Elementary School.

Startland News contributor Joyce Smith covered local restaurants and retail for nearly 40 years with The Kansas City Star. Click here to follower on X (formerly Twitter), here for Facebook, here for Instagram, and by following #joyceinkc on Threads.

The post Tiki Taco plans to double its restaurant count in 2025, starting at one busy Olathe corner appeared first on Startland News.