Photo By Diane Armijo

By Erika Aguilar and Michael Armijo Walnut – One of Walnut’s iconic restaurants, Taco Factory on Lemon Avenue and La Puente, has closed because the landlord refused to renew the lease, said owner Raquel Guillen. The Walnut Taco Factory had been there for over 26 years. The Taco Factory previously had nine locations in Los Angeles County, Orange County, and San Bernardino County, until a few weeks ago when Guillen was notified by her landlord that her very first location in Walnut was shutting down. “The landlord did not renew my lease and it took me by surprise,” Guillen said, “I’ve been at that location for over 26 years and never had an issue with the leasing renewal.” She also added that she had great relationships with her prior two landlords and that closing down her very first store came as a shock. “This is what can happens when you don’t own your own building,” she said. Guillen and her staff recently cleared out all of the equipment from the Taco Factory. Holding back tears, she shared, “I had an emotional attachment to that restaurant.” Several calls to The Weekly News by residents felt it was discrimination, that the landlord wanted to place an Asian food based restaurant in that spot. B ut calls to the landlord by The Weekly News and by the former tenant Guillen were not answered. “Losing my first store in Walnut was a tough lesson I learned. I am curious to see what kind of food will be sold there now,” said Guillen. But she is relentless and unwilling to yield to the recent events that have occurred. “I am trying to find a new location in Walnut because that is where I started,” she said. She has already met with a new landlord and is trying to reopen another location. She indicated that she had eight employees working at the Walnut restaurant location and that she did not want to let them go. “We’re making arrangements to relocate our employees to the other locations,” she said. But still the question remains, “Why did they not renew her lease?” She recalled, “I remember we ran out of meat, beans, rice, and everything the first day we opened in Walnut.” “I ran a bridal shop in Pico Rivera for eight years and decided to open up my own restaurant in Walnut when I moved and bought a house in that city,” she said. The City of Walnut only had a pizza place, a bank, and a supermarket located in that shopping center back in the 1980s. Gullien said she always passed by Lemon Avenue and La Puente Road and believed that she could run a successful restaurant business at that location, so that working parents like her could purchase authentic Mexican food at a low cost to feed their children. “I was a working, single mom at the age of 24 and I didn’t want to cook when I got off work. I felt that the city needed more local restaurants to pick up food for their kids on the way home, and since the restaurant business was familiar to me, I followed my dream,” she said. Reminiscing back to the days of her childhood when she would hear the clunking sounds of pot and pans in her parents’ restaurant kitchen, and the aroma of fresh homemade corn and flour tortillas, Raquel Guillen pursued the “American dream” of opening her first restaurant. It began in 1984 at a small, 600 foot square leasing space in Walnut, California. Guillen expressed that her late son, George, designed her first restaurant logo when he was in junior high school. It was a drawing of a man wearing a hat, known as a sombrero in Spanish, taking a nap while homemade tortillas were falling into a pot off the machine line. She explained that she redesigned the logo in 2006, after she witnessed a Cal Poly Pomona Chicano Studies Professor explain to his students at the Diamond Bar Taco Factory that the old logo misrepresented Latinos as being lazy and always making tortillas. She revealed, “Chicomecóatl” also known as “Xently,” was her choice for the new Taco Factory logo. The logo represents the “goddess of corn” and the “maize deity” of Aztec/Mexican history in 15th-16th early century. “It is very important to me because she is a woman and represents corn,” Guillen conveyed. With determination and respect for the residents of the City of Walnut, she has pride for her clientele and everything that they have done for her and her family. Guillen said that the residents of Walnut are even driving to the Taco Factory location in Diamond Bar. Guillen owns and runs other restaurant locations in Claremont, Chino Hills, Fontana, Irvine, Rancho Cucamonga, and Upland and two locations in Irvine. “This wasn’t something I was expecting, but we’ll see what happens in the near future,” she said.