Dora Rivera used to joke with her son about all the gold jewelry she once owned before selling it, piece by piece, to keep her longtime and beloved San Antonio restaurant, Pete’s Tako House, alive. But her son, Pete Rios, knew she wasn’t kidding. It was just one example of the sacrifices Rivera made as the matriarch behind the nearly 50-year-old restaurant.
Pete’s Tako House and the customers Rivera considered family are now mourning her loss. Rivera died Thursday, September 3. She was 77. She had stepped away from the restaurant before the coronavirus pandemic, leaving the business to Rios and his sister, Veronica Zamarripa.
“This woman sacrificed so much to keep her business going,” Rios told MySA. “Running the restaurant now, I understand what she means by the sacrifices she had to do.”
Building Pete’s Tako House
Rivera’s roots in the restaurant industry began long before Pete’s Tako House. According to her son, she worked with a family friend at Tink-A-Tako and helped open a location at Main and Lexington avenues in the late 1970s. Not long after, Rivera was offered the restaurant on Main Avenue and renamed it Pete’s Tako House after her husband. The business eventually moved to its current Brooklyn Avenue location in 2012…