LeBron James's Taco Tuesday Tradition Is Even More Real Than You Think

“Taco Tuesday” gets thrown around by restaurants so often that it’s easy to assume it’s just a marketing gimmick. For LeBron James, though, it’s a genuine, years-long family ritual that started at home long before it ever became a public spectacle.

How It Started With His Personal Chef

The tradition reportedly began small, with LeBron’s personal chef making tacos for the family on Tuesday nights. What started as a simple weekly dinner slowly turned into something much bigger once James began sharing it online, and by 2018 and 2019 it had become a recognizable part of his public persona.

The ritual has its own signature move: James films himself asking his family what day it is, then answers his own question with an enthusiastic, drawn-out shout of “Taco Tuesday”. Guests have gotten pulled into the tradition too, including Anthony Davis, who joined in shortly after signing with the Lakers.

When It Went Public

The tradition eventually spilled out of the James family kitchen entirely. During a Lakers game in October 2019, fans at Staples Center broke into a spontaneous chant of “Taco Tuesday” in the fourth quarter, and James, watching from the bench area, happily played along.

Even a genuine emergency didn’t fully derail it. When the Getty Fire forced James and his family to evacuate their Brentwood home that same year, he used that week’s Taco Tuesday to send a local taco truck to feed the firefighters and first responders working the blaze, turning his own tradition into a small gesture of thanks.

The Trademark Battle

James clearly saw more than sentimental value in the phrase. In 2019, his company filed to trademark “Taco Tuesday” outright, with plans to use the name for a podcast, but the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected the application in 2023, ruling that the phrase was too commonplace for any one person or brand to own.

James’s position on the phrase shifted after that. When Taco Bell later challenged Taco John’s decades-old trademark on the term, James publicly sided with the effort to free it up, arguing that Taco Tuesday was a tradition that belonged to everyone rather than something a single company should be able to lock down.

Turning It Into Something Bigger

The tradition eventually found its way into James’s charitable work as well. During the pandemic, his foundation arranged for taco meal kits to be delivered every Tuesday to roughly 1,300 people connected to the I Promise School he founded in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, turning a family dinner habit into a recurring act of community support.

What started as one chef making tacos for one family on a random weeknight has grown into something James has leaned into publicly for years, whether that means a stadium full of fans chanting along, a legal fight over who gets to use the phrase, or simply another Tuesday dinner at home with his kids.