Little Miner Taco, which opened July 24 in Rockville Town Center, will hold a grand opening fiesta Aug. 28 with free birria tacos and agua fresca drinks – a Mexican fruit drink – to celebrate its newest brick-and-mortar location.
The fiesta will run from 1 to 4 p.m. at the eatery’s new location at 39 Maryland Ave., Suite A, in Rockville. At the event, a DJ will be spinning tunes and the first 50 guests who show up will receive a complimentary birria spice kit and $5 gift cards, according to the eatery.
Owner Kathy Voss told MoCo360 Wednesday that business in the first month since opening has been steady. “I’m super grateful to the neighbors, everyone at Rockville Town Center that’s helped out and not just helped out but just come to buy food,” she said, noting the area produces a large lunch crowd.
Little Miner Taco also operates a location in Brentwood in Prince George’s County and a ghost kitchen in Northeast Washington, D.C., which handles take-out and delivery orders only. It also has two food trucks serving the D.C. metro and Baltimore regions.
In addition to free food and drinks, music and gifts, the grand opening fiesta will welcome Rockville city officials, business leaders from the Rockville Chamber of Commerce and Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) officials, according to a press release. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held at 1:15 p.m.
The event is also a celebration of the eatery’s new initiative to donate 100% of proceeds from its $3 kids meals to the MCPS Educational Foundation’s Dine with Dignity program, the release said. Dine with Dignity was established to “settle unpaid school meal balances,” according to the foundation website. Since 2018, the program has settled meal debt of $235,579 for more than 16,000 county students.
This coming school year, which starts Monday, the program aims to raise $170,000 to settle some of the $700,000 of unpaid meal debt accrued by MCPS students, according to the foundation website. At the fiesta, Little Miner Taco will present a check to MCPS foundation officials.
According to Voss, Little Miner Taco offered kids meals at no charge during the COVID-19 pandemic to help out families and children who were unable to receive free meals while schools were closed. After the pandemic, the program evolved into a $3 kids menu.
“The initial purpose was to really target those kids who didn’t have any nutritious food coming in other than at school,” Voss said. “So now that gap is filled, the schools are back, so now I want to help the schools fill the gap.”
The restaurant’s kids meals include cheese and chicken quesadillas served with rice and beans and pulled chicken and rice.
Little Miner Taco’s Rockville location features a colorful mural, a full salsa bar and indoor seating for 30. According to the release, the location will also have a full-service bar, which is expected to open in 2025.
In addition to the bar, another exclusive item at Little Miner Taco’s Rockville location will be vegan cheese. Voss said the eatery will serve plant-based cheese starting next week after hearing requests from patrons.
In the beginning
The eatery began as a food stall in miXt Food Hall in Brentwood in 2019 and quickly went viral on social media for its birria taco.
Voss said a viral photo of the birria taco dripping in consume sauce received more than 144,000 retweets within 24 hours. “It was really a blessing in disguise,” she said.
During the pandemic, the food hall shut down and Voss decided to take Little Miner Taco mobile, so she rented a food truck in April 2020.
“We ran it almost like a speakeasy. We would post [on social media] the general vicinity of where we would be and open up ordering at noon and we would be flooded with orders and have to shut it down by like 12:30 p.m.,” she said.
Voss said she chose to open the eatery in Rockville due to its proximity to North Bethesda’s Pike & Rose neighborhood, where the taco shop ran a food stall at the now-closed The Block food hall. She said she did not want to displace the staff who worked at the food hall and leave behind patrons in the neighborhood.
“Rockville Town Center, it just looked great. I mean the revitalization plan for it, having other really great restaurants open nearby, like Kusshi [Sushi], it just made it a very attractive space to want to open up,” Voss said. “I feel like I’m part of the revitalization.”
Since opening the eatery, Voss has been impressed with the lunch rush in Rockville Town Square–so much so that Little Miner Taco plans to offer a breakfast menu.
She said chef Joel Sanchez began this week conducting tastings for breakfast items–think chilaquiles, breakfast burritos and tacos–and hopes to launch the menu in early to mid-September.