About us

Taylor Mason is the founder and CEO of Taylor's Tacos Chicago. She met Maya Mason in 2016, and together they officially launched Taylor's Tacos Chicago, LLC. What started as a fun way to bring friends together on a Taco Tuesday has blossomed into a catering company + taco shop, event space called Taylored, and non-profit Tacos Create Community NFP.

Taylor was born and raised on the west side of Chicago. She graduated from Whitney Young High School and went on a scenic route through a rural Kansas junior college to ultimately graduate from Pepperdine University. Sunny California is where she always wanted to be and where her love for street tacos flourished. When she wasn't playing ball (she received a full basketball scholarship to Pepperdine), you could find her cooking up her version of tacos in the kitchen. During her senior year of college, Taylor's mother had unexpected back to back brain aneurysms and her dad asked her to return home to Chicago to help out after graduation. Taylor made the tough decision to come back and she worked in the family's sports business while her mother was nursed back to health. As she worked on finding her lane as a new adult in Chicago, her mind kept going back to those delicious street tacos in her life in sunny California. Once her mother got better, she decided to curate an artist showcase called "The VIBE Collective" and she sold the first Taylor's Tacos for $1. After a sell-out event and a line around the corner, she decided to put more effort into building out the Taylor's Tacos brand.

Maya Mason went to the illustrious Chicago Academy for the Arts with a focus on dance and ballet. She went on to Columbia College in Chicago in the hopes of a career in the arts and fashion. She acquired her work ethic from her parents who both had culinary degrees and worked within the food industry and Maya learned so much from them unknowingly. She grew up in her mother's garden, learning how to grow and manipulate her own organic foods. She learned recipes from her father who managed and consulted in a multitude of restaurants including Demera Ethiopian. Cooking, the science of cooking, and the art of food was something that was always close to her heart.

Taylor and Maya met in 2016, two years after the first Taylor's taco was ever made. Maya brought on the creative direction, unique flavor profiles and kitchen streamlining while Taylor took on the business execution and branding. Together, they went down to city hall and officially launched Taylor's Tacos Chicago in 2018. They moved into their own private commercial kitchen in The Hatchery in 2019 and scaled the business tremendously. Taylor and Maya tied the knot in July 2020, opened their own commercial event space called TAYLORED in March 2022, and their own taco shop and catering kitchen on May 5, 2023.

Taylor's Tacos has served over 300,000 tacos to date and the taco crew has completed over 2300 catering gigs. Taylor's Tacos was reviewed as a place to visit by the both the Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times, as well as Eater, and Infatuation. ANDDD the the "sexy, crispy SHRIMP" taco won the best taco in Chicago on Good Morning America in August 2023.