At a Jersey Shore bar, Taco Tuesday's soul lives on in a trademark
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SOMERS POINT, N.J. - Gregory Gregory is a man of many titles: a grandfather, a Jersey Shore restaurateur and raconteur, a 71-year-old with the same first and last name.
He caught a 985-pound alligator with a beef lung as bait, helped reel in a 600-pound marlin and killed a bear with just a long bow and a wooden arrow from less than 30 feet away. He tells tales of the three resident ghosts who supposedly haunt Gregory's Restaurant & Bar, previously a World War II-era brothel less than 20 miles from Atlantic City. The specters include an uncle named Eddie, a customer with a love of snapper soup and a lady of the evening who was stabbed in the bordello days.
But he is best known for something else: Gregory has promoted the bar as the home of the original Taco Tuesday, as well as the country's first trademarked use of a phrase that's grown into a weekly American cultural phenomenon. Since that first Taco Tuesday night in 1979, Gregory estimates that the bar has served more than 2 million tacos in what has become a Somers Point tradition for generations of families and singles on a budget, and 20-somethings needing to soak up the booze and bad decisions.
It's a custom that comes in the form of two hard-shell ground beef tacos with taco seasoning, lettuce, tomatoes and shredded cheddar cheese that Gregory's serves with a spork in a red basket and sells for $3.50. And it has all happened under a trademark that Gregory, who amusingly doesn't like tacos or Mexican food and hasn't eaten a taco in decades, has owned for more than 40 years.
"A South Jersey taco is a Gregory's taco," Gregory told The Washington Post. "It's a culinary delight, but it's one of a kind."
With that delight comes doubt about what's ahead for the ritual that has made Gregory's a Garden State institution. The future of Gregory's Taco Tuesday trademark in the state of New Jersey now faces uncertainty amid Taco Bell's petition to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in May seeking to cancel the trademark. Taco Bell, which serves more than 40 million customers in the United States each week, has argued that the Taco Tuesday phrase has become so generic that the trademark should be liberated to allow any of the hundreds of restaurants, bars and cantinas in the country that already ignore the Taco Tuesday trademark to use it in their marketing without fear of any potential legal action.
In July, Taco John's, a Wyoming-based chain that operates almost 400 restaurants, gave up its right to the trademark in 49 states, which it had owned since 1989. In a statement to The Post, Taco Bell CEO Mark King said that while the chain was thrilled Taco John's had abandoned its Taco Tuesday trademark, "we remain committed to freeing Taco Tuesday everywhere, including in New Jersey."
"We stand by our belief that Taco Tuesday belongs to all who make, sell, eat and celebrate tacos," King said. A spokesperson for Taco John's did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Taco Bell's legal push to liberate the phrase, which has included the marketing help of NBA great and Taco Tuesday enthusiast LeBron James, has left Gregory with the last trademark of its kind in the country in what he described as a modern-day David vs. Goliath story.
Taco Bell has responded by saying it would offer customers free Doritos Locos Tacos on each Tuesday through Sept. 5.
"Every day is taco day at Taco Bell, so I don't know why they have to take Taco Tuesday from us," said Steve Altamuro, a family friend and attorney for Gregory in the legal fight against Taco Bell. "They have Taco Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you name it. I don't know what they're trying to accomplish."
The trademark battle also has Gregory thinking what it could mean in the long term for a small business open since 1946 that has proclaimed itself as the home of the country's original Taco Tuesday.
"I just want everybody to know that we started Taco Tuesday," he said.
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From 'take-o' to taco
When Gregory and his partner, Walt, were set to take over the family business in 1979, he wanted to see what it was that people were waiting in line for at a stand inside Philadelphia's Gallery mall. Gregory, then 26 and working at a beer and liquor store at the mall, finally got to the front of the line and uttered a sentence to the lady behind the counter that would change the trajectory of his life.
"I'll have a take-o."
"She says: 'It's taco. It's Tex-Mex,'" he remembered about the day he ate his first taco. His excitement, however, was short-lived. "I take a bite - and I couldn't eat it. It was horrible, awful," he said, noting he's hated cumin ever since. "But the long line continued every day, so I knew they were on to something."
After Gregory unsuccessfully tried to make tacos a permanent part of the menu in January 1979, he persuaded his brother and family to have tacos available once a week as a promotion.
"I wanted to do it on Tuesday because Wednesday was 'Drink and Drown' at Tony Mart's, which had 50-cent drinks, and the place was always packed," Gregory said, referring to the famous dance club. "I wanted to cut their legs off and get the people into our place so they could have their big power load on Tuesday rather than the night after when they're not feeling up to it."
The owner got a buddy of his from Texas to show him how to make the tacos. Gregory found a salsa recipe from inside the pages of a Playboy magazine from 1978. Gregory decided on hard shells, which were popularized in the United States by places like Taco Bell and used in Tex-Mex and other restaurants, over the more traditional-in-Mexico soft shells.
On Feb. 6, 1979, they sold five orders - then three for $1 - on that first Taco Tuesday. The second week, they sold eight.
"Nobody knew what they were," he said.
So when Gregory made a run to Philadelphia to buy 200 corn taco shells, the thought that would last him through the month. Then, on the third week, they sold 70 orders, or 210 tacos, and Gregory had to make the last tacos out of soft tortillas.
"I thought, 'Holy smokes, there's a line out the door of 30 people trying to come in,'" said Paul Gregory, one of the chefs who now runs Gregory's along with his brother, Joe. "It fit the bar perfectly."
Everyone in Somers Point now knew about Taco Tuesday.
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'You have to get a trademark'
The history of who came up with Taco Tuesday has long been in dispute.
Gustavo Arellano, a Los Angeles Times columnist and author of the 2012 book, "Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America," reported in Thrillist that an El Paso business was promoting tacos sold on Tuesdays as early as 1933. Newspaper clippings from across the United States - Arizona, Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin - show businesses promoting tacos on Tuesday. The earliest documented use of the phrase Taco Tuesday came from a 1973 newspaper ad in Rapid City, S.D., promoting three tacos for $1 at the Snow White Drive-In.
Gregory Gregory said he had never heard of Taco Tuesday before the bar launched the promotion in 1979.
"It rolled off the tongue, just like Gregory Gregory," he said, referring to how his father gave him the same first and last name.
By 1981, Jack Spellman saw the long lines and believed Gregory needed to stake a legal claim on Taco Tuesday. Spellman, a professor who taught Gregory public speaking at what was then called Atlantic Community College, recommended that his former student file for a trademark until Spellman himself brought the paperwork for him to sign.
"He said: 'You have to get a trademark. This is a phenomenon, this is crazy,'" Gregory said. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recognized the Taco Tuesday trademark for Gregory Hotel Inc., the bar's parent company, on Oct. 19, 1982.
As the bar was gaining more recognition, Gregory admits he has jokingly called other restaurants in the state he's heard running their own Taco Tuesday promotions to remind them that he's got the trademark. But he almost lost it entirely in 1989, when he lapsed on renewing the trademark, and Taco John's was awarded it from the patent office. The bar and the chain eventually came to agreement that gave Taco John's ownership of the trademark in the 49 other states, while Gregory's had a simple request.
"We just wanted New Jersey," the owner said.
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Taco entanglement
As groups of people trickle in from the beach for a lunch break in early August, they are greeted with an orange bar menu in comic sans font that has a typo for its most well-known dish - "TWO BEFF TACOS" - at the "HOME OF THE ORIGINAL TACO TUESDAY® SINCE 1979." The lunch line here on this day is busier than at the Taco Bell location about a mile away.
Paul Gregory recalled how Taco Tuesday had gotten so big at Gregory's by around 2003 that they ran a taco-eating contest that eventually had to end because the hard corn shells were choking hazards that were also causing some people to bleed, all in hope of winning a surfboard or a bike.
"You had to drink a beer afterward and it got a little ugly," he said.
Gregory Gregory has had fun in the past with those who've challenged the trademark. When James made an unsuccessful attempt to claim the trademark in 2019, the bar's marquee poked fun at the NBA superstar: "C'mon, LeBron." After James's son, Bronny, recently suffered cardiac arrest, Gregory made the sign read, "Our prayers are with LeBron's son." "I'm in the fun business, I'm not in the nasty business," he said.
But the good vibes at Gregory's were upended when Taco Bell came after it and Taco John's in May. Gregory said he was shocked that the legal challenge was unfolding - and even more surprised when Taco John's folded as quickly as it did and gave up the Taco Tuesday trademark in the 49 other states.
Gregory acknowledges he does not know how long his business can keep up a legal fight with a conglomerate like Taco Bell, especially if the legal expenses creep into the range of six figures. Altamuro, his attorney who regularly practices more in estate and personal injury cases, said they've been contacted by other attorneys willing to work with them pro bono or at a reduced rate, but no one has signed on yet to help in the fight.
"Greg has had some preliminary conversations with Taco Bell, so we'll see if they want to go to the mattresses or find a mutual resolution," said Altamuro, referencing a famous scene from "The Godfather."
Gregory, wearing a black Gregory's Taco Tuesday polo with an embroidered sombrero and Dos Equis logo, fears that the loss of the New Jersey trademark would be a crushing blow to a business that's had its paydays for employees on Wednesdays because of the decades-long success of the promotion. He hopes he can come to an agreement with Taco Bell where the chain somehow acknowledges Gregory's and its claim to the trademark that it might be forced to give up.
But he can't think about that now, because he needs to get back to work. It is Taco Tuesday, and tacos are still on the menu.
"It's Gregory's Mexican food - olé," he said in his South Jersey accent. "When people go to other places, they'll say, 'We had tacos in California and they don't even look like yours.' And I'd just say, 'Well, ours are ours.'"
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