The 5 Why's of HeyTaco

You know when you are talking to a kid, they ask you a question and they keep asking a bazillion follow up ‘Whys’ to your answer. It is kind of annoying, but it always helps us adults either clarify our knowledge of a thing or learn that we might not know everything and might need to think about it more. 

We played that Why game amongst ourselves and shared the answers to the most common Why questions we get from people outside of HeyTaco. So here they are - enjoy!

Why tacos? 

We have been asked this question more time than we can count and there are two simple reasons for it:

• Food brings people together.
• Tacos are fun. Some might not love tacos, but no one hates them.

Why the daily taco limit? 

Lots of other companies focus on monthly limits for recognition, and what often ends up happening is that people wait until the end of the month to share recognition. And you know why? Because they forget! That recognition at the end of the month ends up being sparse and not meaningful because who remembers what someone else did two weeks ago? We barely remember what we did yesterday, let alone what someone else did. 

Daily taco limit encourages timely recognition, in the moment, which also ends up being more genuine. 

Why 5 daily tacos?

We experimented with a lot of different amounts of tacos back in our youth as a company, and here is what we learned - scarcity drives us to act because we have a valuable resource that will expire. 

• 5 tacos a day was the right amount of tacos for people to feel like they can give them out freely, but not too freely where tacos given have no value. 
• If someone has only 1 or 2 tacos, they feel that someone might need to invent a time–traveling toaster in order to earn their tacos, so small things that mean a lot often go unrecognized.
• If someone has 10 tacos to give every day, the value of each of their taco is now diminished. In short, they are handing tacos out like candy which defeats the purpose of appreciation. It is important to appreciate people, but if all you shared was appreciation people would stop paying attention to it. 

Why custom rewards? 

We have strong opinions about rewards and can talk about them forever. Here are the three shorts answers:

• Having rewards is not necessary to build a culture of gratitude. Turns out, people like saying 'thank you' because it is the right thing to do.
• Every person on a team is different, and to have generic automated rewards that are supposed to fit everyone end up not fitting anyone.  
• Custom rewards allow teams to be very creative and introduce experiences that can’t be found in any store (examples are - a poem written by your colleague, lunch with your CEO, a t- shirt designed specifically for taco users). You can’t find those on Amazon. 

Why HeyTaco? 

Because sharing appreciation with our teammates can be fun, easy and meaningful. We do one thing, and we do it really well. We help teams around the world build a culture and attitude of gratitude fueled by tacos. 

If you have any more Why questions, let us know!