The end of an era is near for those who liked to go late at night to Velvet Tacoin Henderson Avenue, Dallas.
Open for more than 11 years in a location formerly occupied by Church’s Chicken just off the Central Expressway service road, the original Velvet Taco will close its doors on January 2, 2023.
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The lease expired, then was extended, and now CEO Clay Dover says it’s time for the original building to go down in the history books as the company continues to grow in other parts of Dallas and Fort Worth, and to there to Nashville, Waco, Oklahoma City, Austin and Miami.
The Velvet Taco at 3012 N. Henderson Ave. is from the family behind Dickey’s Barbecue; It is next door to the original Dickey’s, which is over 80 years old.
Velvet Taco is expected to transform into Trailer Birds, a Dickey family chicken tenders and wings restaurant, by May 2023.
Employees at the location were given the option to move to a new Velvet Taco near Elm Street and Good-Latimer Expressway in Deep Ellum that is scheduled to open on January 16, 2023.
The opening of that restaurant in Deep Ellum heralds the start of Velvet Taco’s second best year ever.
In 2021 the company opened 11 restaurants.
By 2023, Dover and his team plan to open 10. (In 2022, he opened six restaurants.)
It all started in that little taqueria located on Henderson Avenue, open at a time when Knox-Henderson was becoming the most popular area for bars and restaurants in the city.
The original rental agreement “was literally sketched out on a napkin by the original founder, Randy DeWitt,” Dover says.
For more than a decade, the contract was only two pages long.
“Despite everything we’ve built, there are touches of the original venue,” says Dover.
The company currently has more than 30 restaurants in operation.
The yellow grid coffered ceiling of the original restaurant, installed to draw attention away from the lack of ceiling in the old building, became a design element of other Velvet Tacos.
The original is where the company started selling “back door chicken,” the rotisserie chicken that they made in limited quantities on certain days of the week.
That tradition has continued in the newer Velvet Tacos, though they are now sold out of a side door or drive-thru.
There was something charming regarding the ordinary back door of the original taco shop.
Dover came on as CEO when he was opening the fourth restaurant, but he remembers that he used to stand in line to pick up his chicken tikka tacos at 2:30 am on the weekends, like many other Dallas residents (me included).
Some recipes have not changed since the beginning, despite the fact that the company has been acquired by two large investment firms, Leonard Green & Partners and L Catterton.
The business’s first general manager, Brandon Bradrick, called the restaurant “subversive” at the time.
“Most of the people who came to Velvet Taco knew regarding street tacos, but no one was doing what we were doing,” he said in an email.
“They came thinking that they were going to serve them some of the usual tacos, with onion and cilantro, and they left impressed.”
He said the restaurant was “a place for the people”; and it was also a social meeting point for following the bars.
When Dover was starting out as CEO, he trained for a month at the original Velvet Taco.
Emma Muñoz was his guide. She started at the company working at the counter and later became a manager. She is now a managing partner of the thriving business.
She is also the longest-serving employee at Velvet Taco.
That is why he remembers the atmosphere of the restaurant: “The vibe, the lighting, the languages spoken, all social strata, dates, lunches, dinners, marriage proposals, birthdays… Velvet Taco was the place where everyone wanted be there,” Muñoz said in an email.
Nighttime traffic on Henderson Avenue is less than it was a decade ago, Dover says.
He thinks a late-night taco craving will be better served in an area that stays open late, like Deep Ellum, where the new restaurant will work until 4 am on weekends.
By 2023, Velvet Taco plans to expand to Deep Ellum, Grapevine, Rockwall, Allen, and near an HEB in north Frisco.
By 2024, Dover plans to expand the business into the Alliance area of Fort Worth and to Mansfield, also near an HEB.
The original Velvet Taco sign will be preserved and displayed at the company’s Far North Dallas headquarters.
There he will remind Dover and his team of the original venue, “an essential part of the brand,” he says.
The original Velvet Taco is located at 3012 N. Henderson Ave., Dallas.
It will be open during the day on January 1, 2023 and will close on January 2, 2023.
