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The Lahaina Tacos family Courtesy Pedro<\/p>\nA Mexican taco shop owner in Hawaii has gained fans around the world thanks to a series of videos that spoof influencer culture.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Haro, 46, tells TODAY.com it took Lahaina Tacos, which opened in February 2025, about a year to gain 1000 followers. \u201cAnd 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,\u201d says Haro.<\/p>\n
Haro\u2019s funny first clip introduces him as the restaurant\u2019s owner who\u2019s forced to act as his own influencer because his family \u201ccan\u2019t afford to pay\u201d a real one.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome with me,\u201d Haro says, using a familiar influencer catchphrase to invite viewers on a behind-the-scenes tour of the restaurant.<\/p>\n
Haro tells viewers his family members opened the restaurant after relocating from the coastal Maui town of Lahaina, where several family members\u2019 homes were destroyed in 2023\u2019s deadly wildfires. <\/p>\n
The video received more than 123,000 likes and comments. \u201cI\u2019m in London and I\u2019m influenced,\u201d joked one new fan.<\/p>\n
Others noted Haro\u2019s silly onscreen charm. \u201cDude just figured out his new career,\u201d wrote one.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cGuys, I am, like, literally and figuratively obsessed and exponentially ob-sessed with this place that I found in downtown Honolulu,\u201d he tells viewers.<\/p>\n
He goes on to describe the restaurant\u2019s offerings, noting it offers special menu items that are \u201cvegan, non-dairy and nonchalant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another clip released recently shows Haro pretending to be a beauty influencer doing a Get Ready With Me (GRWM) challenge.<\/p>\n
Wearing a bathrobe with a towel on his head, Haro explains his beauty regimen relies exclusively on \u201csuper luxurious\u201d Lahaina Tacos menu items and not yucky store-bought items from \u201cBig Cosma.\u201d<\/p>\n
His exfoliant of choice? The restaurant\u2019s pico de gallo, the \u201cperfect botanical peel.\u201d Be sure to press it into your skin until it\u2019s absorbed \u201ctransdermally, transcendently and transatlantically,\u201d he advises.<\/p>\n
Haro\u2019s skin cells, he reveals, are \u201cmitochondrially obsessed\u201d with the restaurant\u2019s sour cream, whose healing live probiotics go so deep that they \u201cliterally will reparent your inner child.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the perfect lip plumper, the restaurant\u2019s spicy salsa. He says, the ingredients include a scorching hot chile de \u00e1rbol that makes it so \u201crich and spicy and unnecessarily confrontational,\u201d diners can\u2019t help but pout.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are doing really, really well. People are being very kind,\u201d Haro tells TODAY.com.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore, if we almost broke even that day, it would be a good day,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
The restaurant also starting selling T-shirts, stickers and ball caps with the restaurant\u2019s name after customers begged for \u201cmerch.\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Haro, who jokes he has a \u201crespectable career\u201d as the longtime executive director of the American Lung Association in Hawaii, never intended to be an online star \u2014\u00a0or a restaurant owner.<\/p>\n
In June, he took over ownership of Lahaina Tacos from his older brother, Armando, who returned to Mexico.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a family dream so we didn\u2019t want to let it die,\u201d Haro says.<\/p>\n
Haro focuses on finances and marketing while his sister Ana cooks. Several other family members, including Haro\u2019s graphic designer husband Troy, also lend their talents to the business.<\/p>\n
The Lahaina Tacos family Courtesy Pedro<\/p>\n
Though Haro displays impressive comedy chops in his videos, he swears he\u2019s never been a ham until now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m the shy one in the family,\u201d he says. \u201cI was the kid that my mom had to be like, \u2018Say hi.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The only acting experience Haro has had is performing in community theater plays a handful of times in his 20s \u2014 he portrayed LeFou in \u201cBeauty and the Beast\u201d \u2014\u00a0which he did to gain public speaking skills. <\/p>\n
He\u2019s also appeared as an extra in a few movies, including a small speaking part in the 2017 comedy \u201cSnatched\u201d starring Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn. <\/p>\n
Near the end of his time on the movie\u2019s set, Haro notes, Schumer told him he was \u201creally funny.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for his new online stardom, the devoted nonprofit exec says he\u2019s happy he\u2019s bringing joy to people while helping grow the family business.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat it\u2019s happening to the benefit of my family is what I love the most,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[415,416],"class_list":["post-39643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mexican-restaurants","tag-mexican-restaurant","tag-mexican-restaurants"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@dnc\/117436085993723649","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}