A stand in the Mojave, east of Barstow.

Del Taco began in the desert. Ed Hackbarth and David Jameson opened the original restaurant in Yermo, California, east of Barstow, on 16 September 1964, English Wikipedia records, under the name “Casa Del Taco.” The company’s own history page gives the same founders, the same town and the same year, and recalls a menu of tacos, tostadas, fries and cheeseburgers. English Wikipedia lists two restaurants in Barstow and one in Needles, followed by a fifth in Corona, which it describes as the chain’s initial location with a drive-through window.

Dick Naugle, who installed the kitchen equipment at Corona, joined Hackbarth and Jameson, and in 1966 the three founded Red-E-Food Systems, Inc. to franchise the name. The same year, English Wikipedia says, the original Del Taco sun logo was created — an orange and blue sunset that set the theme the brand has kept ever since. Naugle left early in the 1970s to start his own chain, Naugles.

In 1973 the company dropped “Casa” from its name, and Red-E-Food Systems became Del Taco, Inc. The shorter name is the one that went on signs from then on. In 1976 Hackbarth and Jameson sold the company to a group of investors, and the new owners sold the rights to use and develop the Del Taco name across the United States outside California, Eugene in Oregon and Yuma in Arizona to W. R. Grace and Company, a chemicals business that set up its own Del Taco Restaurants company in Dallas.

Del Taco and Naugles came back together later. English Wikipedia dates the merger of the two chains to February 1989; the company’s own history gives 1988. In the same decade, the company says, its restaurants began to stay open all night.

The 1992 sun.

A recorded turning point in Del Taco’s visual identity is a redesign. In 1992, English Wikipedia records, the company recaptured exclusive rights to its name from W. R. Grace and set out to redesign its restaurant exteriors, kitchens and corporate logo together. It presented a restaurant design called Concept 2000, and in August 1992 introduced a new logo.

The new mark kept the sun but changed its setting. In place of the orange and blue sunset, English Wikipedia says, there was a yellow sun rising over green mountains against a red background, and the colours were said to represent the main ingredients of the food — cheese, lettuce and tomatoes. The company’s history page also lists a “new logo design” among its 1990s initiatives to improve the brand’s image.

The redesign came at a difficult moment: in 1993 Del Taco filed for Chapter 11 protection, English Wikipedia records. The company kept the new identity through the recovery that followed, and in 2000 signed an agreement with Compass Group that opened Del Taco restaurants on US military bases.

The early 2000s added sports sponsorships, which put the Del Taco logo on stadium signs and drink cups for teams including hockey’s Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and basketball’s Los Angeles Clippers and Utah Jazz, English Wikipedia says. The company’s history also mentions the “Del Taco Super Special Show,” a humorous series about the brand, and in 2021 it launched a rewards app called “Del Yeah! Rewards.”

The map has kept moving. English Wikipedia records that W. R. Grace had operated Del Taco restaurants in Texas under a 1978 licensing agreement and sold them to Taco Bell in 1992; Del Taco returned to Texas in November 2010 with a restaurant in Denton, opened in Columbus, Ohio, in October 2020, and reached Virginia with a restaurant in Chesapeake in July 2024.

The roadside identity.

A quick-service brand is met first from the road. Before anyone reads a menu, the identity has to work on a pole sign seen from a moving car, on a roofline or a painted wall, and on the lane markings that steer a driver towards the order point. Building colours, awnings and lit lettering do much of that work, and a chain’s buildings are often designed so that one looks like the next.

The drive-thru adds its own set of surfaces: the preview board, the menu board beside the speaker post, the canopy over the window and the directional signs in between. Each has to be read quickly, often at night and in poor weather, which tends to favour short words, heavy lettering and strong contrast between type and background.

Inside the bag the identity carries on in smaller pieces — wrappers, boxes, cups, napkins and bags — printed in a limited set of colours and repeated across many outlets. Uniforms, trays and receipts follow the same palette.

Each guide that follows looks at who founded the brand, who owns it now and how its name, mark and buildings are recorded, and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Owners since the founders.

Del Taco has had many owners. After W. R. Grace, the chain was run from 1990 by chief executive Kevin K. Moriarty, who with his management team soon became its owner, English Wikipedia records. In 2006 it was bought by Sagittarius Brands of Nashville, Tennessee, the parent company of Captain D’s. On 30 June 2015 it became a public company through Levy Acquisition Corporation. On 6 December 2021 Jack in the Box announced it would acquire Del Taco, and the purchase closed in March 2022.

That arrangement lasted under four years. Nation’s Restaurant News reported on 23 December 2025 that Jack in the Box had completed the sale of Del Taco Holdings to Yadav Enterprises, a deal announced that October as part of Jack in the Box’s plan to simplify its business. Yadav Enterprises, led by its founder and chief executive Anil Yadav, is a franchise operator whose roster, the magazine said, includes Jack in the Box, Denny’s and TGI Fridays restaurants, and which is also franchisor for Taco Cabana and Nick the Greek. Nation’s Restaurant News added that Del Taco would remain headquartered in Lake Forest, California. Yadav Enterprises has owned Del Taco since December 2025, and English Wikipedia now lists the chain as its subsidiary.

Through all of those owners the name has stayed close to its 1973 form, and the sun has stayed at the centre of the mark.

For a design guide, Del Taco shows how a single symbol — a sun over a landscape — can hold a brand together across decades of new owners. Compare Taco Bell, the other Southern California taco chain, and El Pollo Loco, another Mexican-style chain from the same region. For this guide we use red, yellow and green with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Del Taco’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.