A Mexican taco shop owner in Hawaii has gained fans around the world thanks to a series of videos that spoof influencer culture.
Pedro Haro and his family own Lahaina Tacos in downtown Honolulu. Business has boomed for the take-out restaurant, which is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and caters to a weekday lunch crowd, since Haro began pretending to be various social media influencers promoting the shop online.
Haro, 46, tells TODAY.com it took Lahaina Tacos, which opened in February 2025, about a year to gain 1000 followers. “And since I started posting these videos like three weeks ago or so, we reached 37,000 followers from all over, people from South Africa and New Zealand and Japan,” says Haro.
Haro’s funny first clip introduces him as the restaurant’s owner who’s forced to act as his own influencer because his family “can’t afford to pay” a real one.
“Come with me,” Haro says, using a familiar influencer catchphrase to invite viewers on a behind-the-scenes tour of the restaurant.
Haro tells viewers his family members opened the restaurant after relocating from the coastal Maui town of Lahaina, where several family members’ homes were destroyed in 2023’s deadly wildfires.
The video received more than 123,000 likes and comments. “I’m in London and I’m influenced,” joked one new fan.
Others noted Haro’s silly onscreen charm. “Dude just figured out his new career,” wrote one.
A second video, with more than 382,000 likes, finds Haro now in slick influencer mode, donning a kicky cowboy hat. He tosses out his own zany buzzwords in signature TikTok upspeak. “Guys, I am, like, literally and figuratively obsessed and exponentially ob-sessed with this place that I found in downtown Honolulu,” he tells viewers.
He goes on to describe the restaurant’s offerings, noting it offers special menu items that are “vegan, non-dairy and nonchalant.”
Another clip released recently shows Haro pretending to be a beauty influencer doing a Get Ready With Me (GRWM) challenge.
Wearing a bathrobe with a towel on his head, Haro explains his beauty regimen relies exclusively on “super luxurious” Lahaina Tacos menu items and not yucky store-bought items from “Big Cosma.”
His exfoliant of choice? The restaurant’s pico de gallo, the “perfect botanical peel.” Be sure to press it into your skin until it’s absorbed “transdermally, transcendently and transatlantically,” he advises.
Haro’s skin cells, he reveals, are “mitochondrially obsessed” with the restaurant’s sour cream, whose healing live probiotics go so deep that they “literally will reparent your inner child.”
For the perfect lip plumper, the restaurant’s spicy salsa. He says, the ingredients include a scorching hot chile de árbol that makes it so “rich and spicy and unnecessarily confrontational,” diners can’t help but pout.
The zany videos have attracted so many new diners that the restaurant at first struggled to keep up with demand. One day, they were even forced to close early after selling out of food.
“We are doing really, really well. People are being very kind,” Haro tells TODAY.com.
“Before, if we almost broke even that day, it would be a good day,” he adds.
The restaurant also starting selling T-shirts, stickers and ball caps with the restaurant’s name after customers begged for “merch.” he says.
Haro, who jokes he has a “respectable career” as the longtime executive director of the American Lung Association in Hawaii, never intended to be an online star — or a restaurant owner.
In June, he took over ownership of Lahaina Tacos from his older brother, Armando, who returned to Mexico.
“This was a family dream so we didn’t want to let it die,” Haro says.
Haro focuses on finances and marketing while his sister Ana cooks. Several other family members, including Haro’s graphic designer husband Troy, also lend their talents to the business.
The Lahaina Tacos family Courtesy Pedro
Though Haro displays impressive comedy chops in his videos, he swears he’s never been a ham until now.
“I’m the shy one in the family,” he says. “I was the kid that my mom had to be like, ‘Say hi.’”
The only acting experience Haro has had is performing in community theater plays a handful of times in his 20s — he portrayed LeFou in “Beauty and the Beast” — which he did to gain public speaking skills.
He’s also appeared as an extra in a few movies, including a small speaking part in the 2017 comedy “Snatched” starring Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn.
Near the end of his time on the movie’s set, Haro notes, Schumer told him he was “really funny.”
As for his new online stardom, the devoted nonprofit exec says he’s happy he’s bringing joy to people while helping grow the family business.
“That it’s happening to the benefit of my family is what I love the most,” he says.
Dining and Cooking