⏮ Part 1: Starting Up, an 🚞 Adventure Through Pictures
One weird thing about how our colors came about was that we both assumed in our head, blue and orange, before even discussing it with each other. Some of that brother intuition I guess.
By: James
From Inception to Finished Logo
This post will just go through a number of pictures grouped in common themes. Within these themes they'll be listed in chronological order. I added brief explanations to this walk down memory lane. I'll do two or three more posts that include pictures from where this leaves off, up to when we had our first event.
Hard to believe this all happened more than a year ago.
At this time Brendan was working and living in Towson, Maryland and I was living at my parents house in Lansdale. I was working remotely for the company I worked for out in San Diego.
When it Started
I don't have any pictures from the first time we made taquitos, which was for a party I had at my parents house with all of our friends. But I do have this one bullet point in my journal from that day: September 19, 2o20.
The taquitos that I made were an absolute hit. Everyone thought they were delicious, myself included.
So, I guess they were good, makes sense why we pursued the idea after the fact. We were eager to start a business and the taquitos were well-liked. We thought they'd be feasible to start a business around so we thought, "why not?"
The Early Stages of TUCKEDito
🚙 Brendan came up from Maryland for the weekend right before Christmas to do some flavor testing. We laid out bowls full of ingredients and kind of just started throwing stuff together inside of tortillas.
Tortilla testing. We needed to find a tortilla that tasted great and was pliable enough so the ends didn't break while being rolled. We tried a whole bunch before we settled on one.
Playing around with the carnitas recipe. I had been doing this for a couple years but now needed to settle on something to keep consistency.
Some more flavor testing. If you can't tell, we both loveee red onion.
A revelation. We found that combining all the ingredients in a bowl made it much quicker to make taquitos.
One of the first taquito pictures, back when we were grilling the taquitos.
The Name Game
The name TUCKEDito came out of weeks of tossing around names. Here are a few I took note of:
- Two Brothers Taquitos
- The Taquito Spot
- Eat Our Taquitos!
- Your Taquitos
- Taquito Two Times
- Tucked-in Taquitos
They're all pretty bad haha. The last one, Tucked-in Taquitos is one Brendan came up with that we liked, but we wanted it to be one word. We also liked the idea of having a made up word so there was no mistake of what you were talking about, even if we dropped "Taquitos" from the end of it.
Three days after he came up with that one I laid in my bed at night saying it repeatedly in my head, trying different combinations until I landed on TUCKEDito. I thought to myself "this sounds like tuxedo" and my mind just started to run in different ways on how to brand the business under this name.
Here's what I jotted down in my journal that night.
My mind was racing at night. Didnt fall asleep until midnight. I was thinking about branding the taquito business. Tuckedito was the name I came up with and the branding ideas below.
taquitos tucked so taught you can eat them in a tuxedo
shirt logo of a taquito wearing a tuxedo.
Or a person wearing a tux with the taquito as a bow tie - gives the idea it’s not messy
Idea of no mess which is big for customers
Taquitos tucked so taught you can eat them tucked in your bed
In the morning brendan and I talked about it and he had no hesitation responding that he liked it. So it was settled on January 27, 2021.
Another "logo" idea. One weird thing about how our colors came about was that we both assumed in our head, blue and orange, before even discussing it with each other. Some of that brother intuition I guess.
Logo and Branding
Our first real business move! This started to make it feel real.
🎨 This is our logo proposal from our friend Meg who is a freelance graphic designer. She did an amazing job giving us so many great options. On top of that she's super easy to work with!
Instagram: @meganeschmittcreative
Here are the first couple sketches that she gave us. We knew we wanted the bow tie included, right away we thought it'd be something fun for branding, but we also wanted something in a circle. We went back to her with these requests
The last one was it. We decided to take the drawings of the taquitos out because we thought it was just a bit too much going on.
Some of the first couple color variations. We liked these and almost went with the middle one but thought the "TUCKED" part might be a little too tough to read. We suggested just an entire blue circle. Meg accommodated our request quickly!
Our final logo! When we got this we were ready to go. Didn't take long for us to start making shirts 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
Nothing better than iron on shirts! Still wearing mine from time to time
Help From Some Great People
Nothing screams "I love you!", like going griddle shopping. She was even nice enough to stand next to it so there was scale when sending the picture to Brendan.
Friends helping us decide what to put on the menu.
That's it for Part 1! Part 2 will continue where we left off and will include the first time someone paid for our taquitos, designing shirts, starting our first social media account ever (neither of us ever had it, personally).