Patrick Siller

Editor’s Note: This is the eighth story in an occasional series featuring landmarks in the Mount Pleasant community.

A 33-year-old taste of Mount Pleasant has found a new location, but kept the same south of the border style.

Taco Boy, a local Mexican restaurant, recently moved from its long-time location at Preston and Mission streets to a building near Mission and High streets.

“We are doing a lot better in the new location, I think because we are back on the main part of Mission Street,” said owner of Taco Boy, Robert Baltierrez II.

The former location is being turned into a mixed-use building after other buildings on the property were severely damaged by fire.

When Baltierrez learned it would take about a year to rebuild what was lost, he decided to move to a different location.

“I didn’t want to close for a year, because it would be really hard to regain business after a loss like that,” Baltierrez said.

Baltierrez said his father, Robert Baltierrez I, opened the business in 1976 after a friend of the Baltierrez family, who attended Central Michigan University at the time, saw the building at 712 W. Preston Road for lease and informed the family, thinking it would do well.

The restaurant became the first Mexican restaurant in Mount Pleasant, Baltierrez said, and one of the original seven restaurants in the city.

Baltierrez said the new location at 804 S. Mission St. has definitely seen an increase in business, even without a drive-thru, which the previous building had.

“There has definitely been a pickup in business since we moved, because of the busier location and because this is bigger and more comfortable,” said Alma senior Katie Collins, an employee at Taco Boy for about two and a half years.

Baltierrez said there are three other Taco Boy locations in Grand Rapids, which are all family run, and all of the recipes are originals from his mother and grandmother.

Mount Pleasant resident Lee Davis is a Taco Boy customer and likes the new location better than the previous one.

“Taco Boy has good food and is really authentic,” Davis said. “I cook for a profession and I can just tell by looking at it that this is a lot better than what they had.”

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E-mail the author: Vanessa Fayz