Fish Tacos For $1.19? A Veteran Journalist Launches A Tasty Investigation

In 2019, when El Pueblo Mexican Food raised the price of their Baja-style fish tacos from $0.99 each to $1.99 each, or two for $3, customers were livid. "The calls, the emails," general manager Nony Funes told me. "I got a lot."

El Pueblo is a small chain of family-owned restaurants, started in 2010, in northern San Diego County. Funes remembered one particular email from a frequent customer who was so irate that Funes could feel "his pain."

"He said, 'You don't understand. I bring people in from out of town. This is something that I talk about to everybody that comes and visits me in San Diego … and you have taken that away from me.'"

El Pueblo's owner backed down and returned to offering their fish tacos for $0.99 — even though they were losing money, Funes said — but with the "agreement" that they would raise the price, a little, once a year. Agreement with who? "With our guests," Funes said. "They do not joke about their fish tacos. It is very, very serious."

Today, El Pueblo's full-sized fish tacos are, still, almost unbelievably, $1.19. Crispy breading that's just the right thickness, creamy chipotle sauce, shredded cabbage and flaky fish. Funes told me they use swai, a species of Southeast Asian catfish also known as "basa."

At that price, you can take a friend out to lunch and spend less than $10 for the two of you. Or order 28 fish tacos, which someone did while I was there on a recent weekday morning.

This story is the result of an, ahem, intensive investigation into how and why El Pueblo keeps its fish taco price so cheap when the price of just about every other food item out there has been rising steeply in recent years.

Chef José Santiago "Santi" Gómez Soberano has worked at El Pueblo for five years. "We sell fish tacos all day, from when we open [at 6 a.m.] to closing," he said.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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The subsidy rumor

El Pueblo's location in Cardiff, just off the I-5 next to a gas station, has long been a pit stop for my family when traveling between L.A. and San Diego or Tijuana. I hadn't really noticed the recent price fluctuations in the fish tacos, honestly (because even $1.50 or $1.99 seems cheap). That is, until recently, when a local surfer told me a peculiar rumor: She said when the restaurant chain first upped the price of its signature dish, a wealthy San Diegan had intervened and was subsidizing the tacos from his own pocketbook, indefinitely, in order to keep the price down.

Funes, the El Pueblo general manager, said the rumor was bogus — which is sad because it would've made a great story. "But if they would like to [subsidize us], they're more than welcome to email me," Funes joked. "I take cash, checks."

She has heard other rumors about the fish tacos, though. "We've heard all kinds of things, that we grow the fish in the back," she said.

Also not true.

Funes attributed the low price to the benevolence of El Pueblo's owner, Jack Ballo. (I asked to interview Ballo but Funes said she handles all media requests). "He really wants everyone to experience good food and doing, at the time $0.99 fish tacos, now $1.19 fish tacos, is a way that he can ensure everybody, no matter what their economic status is, can get really good food and be full," Funes said.

But there is an economic calculus.

El Pueblo's fish tacos, just before they disappeared down a reporter's gullet.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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A loss leader

El Pueblo's fish tacos are much less expensive than everything else on their menu. Their other taco standards — carne asada, pollo asado, adobada, carnitas — all go for $6.90 each. Their lengua taco is $7.90.

A simple bean and cheese burrito is $9.40.

Ben Brown is a San Diego-based restaurant technology consultant (yep, that's a thing). He also happens to be a fan of El Pueblo's fish tacos which, he suspects, are a loss leader. A loss leader is an item sold at below-market cost, often to attract customers and keep them coming back.

The idea, Brown said, is "you're getting them in through the door and they will add additional items to their order. Or the people that they are with will add additional items to their order to more than compensate for the loss they'd be taking on the initial item."

He also said the cheap tacos serve as an alternative to placing ads in print or online. "It's an easy way to attract attention," Brown said. "So I would consider it a marketing cost, and a very fun one at that."

When I visited two of El Pueblo's locations on a weekday morning, I did see some people, and some ticket orders, with a mix of fish tacos and other items on their plates. But I also saw a lot of straight fish taco orders — one, six, 28. And this was before 10 a.m.

"On a daily basis, there are orders of 40, 50 fish tacos," Funes said.

She said workers often come in early and stock up for two meals. "Eat a few fish tacos for breakfast, put the rest in their lunchbox," Funes said.

The bar at El Pueblo's Del Mar location. Alcohol sales at restaurants often help make up for low profit margins on food sales.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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When bought in large enough quantities, Funes said, the company can at least break even on the tacos.

She said over the previous weekend, the company had sold 10,000 fish tacos at just one of their three restaurants. For comparison, she said, they sold about 2,000 carne asada tacos over the same time period.

Another way restaurants can make up for low, or no, profit margins on food, Brown said, is by selling drinks, especially the boozy kind. "Alcoholic beverages are a gold mine for most restaurants," Brown said. "They require almost no maintenance and the margins are astronomical."

One of El Pueblo's restaurants has a full bar. A second one, in Carmel Valley, is set to open later this month.

Customers old and new

Faye Gentry munched on a single fish taco — lunch for $1.19! — while she waited for her car to get washed and detailed at the gas station next door to El Pueblo's Cardiff spot.

She said she's been coming to El Pueblo for "years and years." "Best in town," she said of the fish tacos. Gentry said she didn't remember the temporary price hike a few years back, and it wouldn't have bothered her, anyway. "It's still a bargain," she said.

First-time customer Wilmer Brizuela stopped at El Pueblo's Del Mar location on his way to work. "Sabrosísimos," he declared after his first bite. "And it's really cheap."

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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Jack Sollecito from Long Beach had come to pick up some fish tacos, for the first time, before heading out for a surf session at nearby San Elijo State Beach. Fellow surfers had told him this stop was a must.

He unfolded his lunch receipt and read it out loud: "Two fish tacos is two dollars and thirty-eight cents. It's awesome."

Indeed.