Rreal Tacos, an Atlanta based taco chain owned by Damian Otero and Miguel Hernandez, opened its 13th restaurant and first Florida location in downtown Tampa on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, built around two tequila walls.

The restaurant occupies the former Haiku space in downtown Tampa and follows an eight month buildout that exceeded 2.5 million dollars, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The room is decorated for Halloween at launch and is described by the paper as Mexico City inspired, with live mangrove trees lining the patio.

What the Tampa buildout involved

The Tampa Bay Times, whose reporting was syndicated by Yahoo, put the renovation of the former Haiku address at more than 2.5 million dollars over eight months. Otero and Hernandez, who serve as the company's operating principals, say they do not franchise the brand and have not taken venture capital or private equity money, a point the paper noted as central to how the company makes design decisions. Rreal Tacos now employs roughly 1,300 people across its locations, and the Tampa restaurant alone accounts for about 120 of those jobs, per the same reporting. Hernandez told the paper that every fixture, down to the patio's live mangrove trees, is a principal level decision, saying the authenticity of those choices changes the feel of the room for guests.

The agave program behind the two tequila walls

The Tampa location has a floating tequila wall at its outdoor bar and a second, eight tiered floating wall inside at the main bar. According to the Tampa Bay Times account, Hernandez described the buying philosophy behind that display as acquiring entire producer catalogs rather than single expressions, spanning mezcal styles made from espadín through tepeztate agave and tequila ranging from blanco to ultra añejo bottlings, citing Clase Azul as an example of the latter category. The paper did not publish a full list of the tequila or mezcal brands stocked at either wall, nor NOM numbers or specific bottle counts for the program.

Rreal Tacos' ownership history and what comes next in Tampa Bay

Rreal Tacos was founded in late 2015 near the corner of Sixth and Juniper streets in Atlanta's Midtown by chef Adrian Villarreal, who trained in Paris and was raised in Monterrey, Mexico, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Villarreal sold the business in 2021 to Otero and Hernandez, who built an employee equity model in which top performing staff can earn ownership stakes in locations as they move into management, a structure the company has described in restaurant trade press. The brand has since expanded from a single Atlanta restaurant to 13 locations, with the Tampa Bay Times reporting that growth as exponential over the five years since the pair took over. The company's next Tampa Bay project is already in the works in downtown St. Petersburg, in the former Red Mesa Cantina building, where the paper reports plans for three stacked concepts: a ground floor Rreal Tacos, a rooftop bar, and a second floor concept yet to be announced.

What this means

Rreal Tacos is a restaurant opening, not a tequila release, and nothing reported here is a claim about the composition of any bottle on its two walls. Clase Azul, the one named example from Hernandez's remarks, appears in Tequila Watch's database as Clase Azul Reposado at 59 of 95 and Clase Azul Plata at 58 of 95, neither carrying a Verified Organic certification on file. What remains unverified is the broader pour list: no published inventory, proof points, or NOM numbers for the wall's other bottles have surfaced in reporting so far.