Our Long, National Taco Tuesday Nightmare Is Finally Over
Let me start this post with an anecdote. I'm in my 40s and have been a Chicago Cubs fan my entire life. If you know anything about baseball, then you know that means that for more than 30 years, my entire fandom was wrapped in an identify of losing, and I was also saddled with 7 more decades of historical losing on top of it. The point is that when 2016 came and the Cubs actually won the World Series, one not-insignificant part of my life was fundementally altered and I had to figure out how to live in a world where the unthinkable had suddenly happened.
And now it's happened again: Taco John's has relented under the combined attack of Taco Bell, at least one regional restaurant association, and Lebron James. The company announced recently that it is giving up its trademark for Taco Tuesday." After well over a decade of Techdirt writing posts on Taco John's bullying nonsense over the wildly generic and descriptive term it somehow got a trademark on, we all now need to learn to live in a world where Taco Tuesday" is free for all companies to use.
In a press release issued Tuesday, Taco John's said it will abandon the registration for TACO TUESDAY. We've always prided ourselves on being the home of Taco Tuesday, but paying millions of dollars to lawyers to defend our mark just doesn't feel like the right thing to do," said Taco John's CEO Jim Creel.
Cool message from a company with a history of firing off legal threats to restaurants far smaller than Taco John's over the trademarked term. Small entities which almost certainly paid some amount of money to have lawyers review and respond to the threats. Why was it the right thing to do to make them spend said time and money, but not the right thing to do for Taco John's when Goliath finally comes calling?
The company is also desperately attempting to spin this all into a PR win for itself after years of pissing people off with its bullying.
Instead, Taco John's challenged Taco Bell and James to donate money toChildren of Restaurant Employees(CORE), a nonprofit organization to which Taco John's said it will be donating $40,000. As we've said before, we're lovers, not fighters, at Taco John's. So in that spirit, we have decided to begin sharing Taco Tuesday with a pledge to contribute $100 per location in our system to restaurant employees with children who are battling a health crisis, death or natural disaster. And we're challenging our litigious competitors and other taco-loving brands to join us in supporting the people who serve our favorite food to guests across the nation."
If Taco Bell were to match Taco John's $100 per location pledge the total donation would be about $720,000, said the press release. [W]hich is less than they'd have to spend in a legal battle for the mark."
Which... fine. I mean, sure, try to get some funds out of the bigger Taco Bell for what sure sounds like a good cause. But attempting to spin this into Taco John's being the altruistic good guy here when it has spent over a decade bullying smaller eateries over a plainly generic term doesn't comport with that posturing.
But whatever else, Taco Tuesday" is free. Let there be tacos!