Photo by Malia Riggs.
Owner Alvaro Rivera at his restaurant, Trampled by Tacos, on the U.S. 280 corridor in Hoover.
Alvaro Rivera opened Trampled by Tacos in the former Little Donkey space near the intersection of U.S. 280 and Alabama 119 in September 2024.
Q: How did you get into this industry?
A: I've been in the industry for almost 20 years … coming from Florida. … I started as a dishwasher, all the way to the prep, to the cook, to everything, to the server. I moved my way up to be a general manager. It got to a point that I wanted to do something different and move up. I have my own family recipe,and I wanted to do something by myself and that's when I met my other partners … We started talking, and we found this location, and I decided to give it a shot, and that started over a year ago, and now we have been open for eight months, and it's been amazing.
Q: What’s your favorite item on the menu and why?
A: I would say the barbacoa. It's basically slow (cooked) beef, and we use our own spices. And actually, that's one of (the recipes of) my grandma and my mom ... from Mexico, and that's something I've been doing for a long time. I was like, “You know what? This is something different.” And that's actually one of our top sellers.
Q: What have you enjoyed about having a business along 280?
A: I really love it a lot. It’s been amazing. Looking around, when I first moved here, I was feeling low for a little bit, with the traffic and everything, but it's been an amazing journey. Everybody's amazing around here — all the people, the people that we have coming from Chelsea, from Mountain Brook, all the way from downtown … Everybody's awesome. Everybody's nice, friendly and one of the things that I like is that every customer coming in, they always have really good feedback about all the stuff that we're doing and make us feel comfortable, make us feel good and we're doing something good for the community. And then we feed it into the community.
Q: You're coming up on your one-year anniversary. What are you looking forward to going forward?
A: We're definitely going to have an event. We're going to have live music, specials. … It's been one year … and we are looking forward to eventually opening more locations … to put more of our home recipes in different places in Birmingham, and who knows, maybe in another state as well, too. But I definitely want to have some live music, have everybody come on and have a good time.
Q: How did you come up with the name and the logo?
A: Well, it took a little while between me and my other partner. One of our partners loves Trampled by Turtles, the band. … So, one of our partners came out with that name, and I'm like, “Hey, give it a try. It looks good.” Something different for everybody. My partner came up with the logo, with the title and the bull and all that stuff … It turned out perfect. It's amazing, and people love it.
