Pink Taco off to a red-hot start

A guy in a black golf shirt stands next to a table full of women. A short time later, the table erupts into peals of laughter. No, Paul Rotner isn’t trying to meet anyone at Scottsdale’s Pink Taco.

The married father of two is doing his job —working the room.

“I’m watching the staff, watching customers’ reactions. I’m watching the food come out of the kitchen, making sure it’s correct. I’m making sure people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Rotner said.

Beyond the hype, beyond the pink, Rotner runs the show as vice president and general manager of Pink Taco.

“We chose Phoenix and we agreed on Phoenix and Scottsdale in part because of the overall growth of the town,” Rotner said over the din of a busy lunch crowd.

Rotner is referring to the Morton family, of Peter and Harry, as well as to the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where the first Pink Taco is located.

“Coming from Vegas, Arizona and California are our two biggest feeder audiences. We’re known there,” said Harry Morton, chief executive officer of Pink Taco.

There are also several Valley investors in the restaurant, including developer Steve Ellman and Dodge Earnhardt, of the Earnhardt car dealerships.

“Steve Ellman is a great, dear friend of the family’s, and Dodge Earnhardt is a great guy. He loved the Pink Taco and he loved the Hard Rock and it just sort of worked,” Morton said.

But the restaurant didn’t open on June 23 without a few bumps.

This spring, Scottsdale Mayor Mary Manross came out publicly against the restaurant’s name, saying it was a derogatory term.

Rotner said he had never previously heard about the restaurant’s purported double meaning.

“There was no controversy in Las Vegas over the name. This was the first time we ran into that.”

The national media jumped all over the story. For the restaurant’s grand opening, the Scottsdale area’s naughtiest resident and Babe’s Cabaret co-owner Jenna Jameson, along with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Cardinals draft pick Matt Leinart and a host of other celebrities were in attendance, making it among the

trendiest of places to see and be seen.

But Rotner bristles at the “face time” characterization and says beyond anything else, the Pink Taco is a restaurant.

“We are a Mexican restaurant, but the difference is we’re serving Mexican food that’s in an upbeat environment. We’re playing rock-nroll music, having fun,” Rotner said.

Over the years, Rotner’s put a lot of work into having fun. He was a key leader in the opening and management of the Hard Rock Cafe restaurants around the country, including the one that opened at 24th Street and Camelback in Phoenix in the mid-1990s.

“I went to Chicago, then I was in New Orleans and then I was in San Francisco. I was kind of like the troubleshooter for the company,” Rotner said.

The Valley’s Hard Rock restaurant has since moved downtown and the Morton’s sold the chain in 1996, but kept the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Over this past year, Rotner supervised construction of the Scottsdale restaurant for the company, watched it come out of the ground and prepared it for the June opening.

For now, he’s overseeing operations but will travel to Los Angeles later this year to manage construction of the third Pink Taco.

He’s had to think on his feet in the East Valley. Accustomed to extensive resources and big Las Vegasstyle spaces, including the 9,000-square-foot Pink Taco, the v-shaped Scottsdale restaurant has been a challenge, Rotner said.

“When you deal with a space that’s a little irregular and about 5,200 square feet, everything becomes a little narrower,” Rotner said.

“We have our own warehouse in our hotel. It can house enough items for nine restaurants. Here, we don’t have that luxury.”

That means that deliveries of even non-food or nonperishable items have to be made much more often, inventories must be kept to a minimum and efficient systems established for a full staff to work in tight spaces.

Whatever the challenges, Rotner and Pink Taco seem to have weathered the storm.

“They tell me that summer time in this area is very slow. But we’ve done phenomenally well. We are a new restaurant, though.” Rotner said.

“On the flip side of that, we have a lot of customers that come in for lunch every day. That tells us we’re doing a great job.”