Why I Built HeyTaco: Making Recognition Feel Human at Work

Hi, I’m Doug, founder of HeyTaco.
One of the questions I get most often is, “Why tacos?”

It’s a fair question, and the answer says a lot about how HeyTaco came to be.

The Story

My career has been shaped by the people I’ve had the privilege of working alongside. Talented, thoughtful teammates taught me something early on. Success isn’t just about hitting goals. It’s about whether people feel valued along the way.

In teams where appreciation and connection were part of everyday work, people showed up differently. They cared more. They helped each other more. Culture wasn’t a buzzword. It was something you could feel.

Those experiences made me a firm believer in the power of recognition. Not as a once-a-year program, but as something woven into the day-to-day experience of work.

What I Noticed Was Missing

In 2015, I was working on a talent platform focused on employee happiness. As I dove deeper into HR software, a pattern became clear.

Many tools were thorough and well-intentioned, but they felt distant. They focused on surveys, performance reviews, and tracking. What they rarely did was make people feel appreciated in the moment.

The human element was missing.

That realization sparked my interest in what I now think of as feel-good software. Tools that don’t just function well, but make people feel good using them. Software that supports positive interactions and reinforces the behaviors that actually make teams work better.

The Aha Moment

Most recognition and HR tools were built for leaders and HR teams, not for the people doing the work every day. That’s why they often felt sterile. Employees weren’t engaging with them. They were just completing a task. When recognition is built around leaders rather than individuals, it becomes infrequent, impersonal, and easy to ignore.

I kept coming back to a simple question.

Why couldn’t recognition be built for individuals to create small moments of appreciation every day?

People don’t usually leave their jobs because of a single bad day. They leave because, over time, they feel unseen or undervalued. Recognition doesn’t need to be formal or complicated. It just needs to be timely and genuine.

I wanted to build something that felt light, human, and easy. Something that made appreciation part of everyday work, not another item on a to-do list.

That’s when the idea for HeyTaco was born.

Building Recognition Where Work Already Happens

Around that time, tools like Slack were becoming the center of how teams communicated. I saw an opportunity to build recognition directly into the flow of work, where conversations were already happening.

HeyTaco would be peer-to-peer, not top-down.
It would be quick, social, and visible.
And most importantly, it wouldn’t feel like work.

Recognition could happen in seconds, not weeks.

But… Why Tacos?

Because tacos make people smile.

We tested different symbols, including virtual beers, but tacos stood out immediately. They were lighthearted, playful, and universally liked. Sending a taco didn’t feel formal or forced. It felt human.

When someone sends you a taco, it creates a small moment of joy. And those moments add up.

Tacos became a symbol of appreciation because they’re approachable, fun, and a little unexpected. Just like the kind of recognition that actually sticks.

Here’s a fun secret. HeyTaco didn’t start with tacos. It started with virtual beers. But tacos won out because they were more inclusive, more playful, and simply made people happier.

Today and the Dream

Today, thousands of teams around the world, from small startups to global companies, use HeyTaco to recognize each other in simple, meaningful ways.

What hasn’t changed is the core idea. Small moments of appreciation can have a big impact.

My dream is simple. One day, appreciation won’t feel like a program or a policy. It’ll just be part of how teams work. And maybe, just maybe, a taco will be the universal shorthand for saying, “I see you. You did great.”

Because when people feel appreciated, work feels better. And when work feels better, everything else tends to follow.

🌮

About the author: Doug Dosberg is the founder of HeyTaco and has spent the last 10 years helping teams build stronger cultures through everyday recognition.

Last updated: January 2026