With one heartbreaking tweet, daughter brings hundreds to her father’s taco truck

It’s incredibly hard to watch anyone you care about struggle with something that used to bring them joy.

Interests and businesses alike can suddenly fall into a downward spiral, and it’s not often that we can help our friends and family recover these things.

However, the story of this young daughter and her close relationship to her struggling father does not have a traditional ending.

Giselle Aviles is a 21-year-old Texas native who values the hard work her father has put into his business. Elias, her father, has been in the food industry for years, and even ran a restaurant for years with other members of the family.

The Aviles family lost their brick and mortar restaurant in 2008 when the economy crashed, but Elias chose to start a Mexican street taco truck and keep preserving. For a time, the truck did quite well.

Giselle’s concern came more recently as conversations with her hardworking father revealed that his truck was not doing as well. When checking in with him, he would often report slow days of only $20-60 a day.

However, it was one particular day that led to the tweet that changed everything. On that day, according to the NY Post, Elias returned after a full, lengthy day of work with only $6 to show for it.

“At that moment, when he told me $6, I said ‘nothing hurts,’” Giselle recalled.

She took to Twitter to post a plea for her father online, writing:

“Hey Twitter!! I wouldn’t normally do this, but my dad’s taco truck business is struggling, he only sold $6 today! If you could retweet, I would appreciate you so much!!”

Accompanying the tweet was a picture of the truck, “Taqueria El Torito” labelled on its side. She tagged the location of Humble, Texas as well.

“When he said $6, it was kind of like are you kidding me?” she told CNN. “So, I just said, ‘Well, we have nothing to lose,’ and I decided to make the tweet that day.”

The tweet was successful almost immediately as thousands retweeted it. Giselle believed immediately that people would show up to help her father and warned him to get ready for more customers when reopening the truck.

Giselle’s father, however, was not as familiar with the internet and could never have expected the turnout that he received.

When he went to open his truck at 8 A.M., there were already dozens of people waiting nearby, some of whom had begun lining up at 6 A.M.

The food truck was so overrun with new patrons that is had to close once to restock and a second time after completely selling out of their food. Elias even asked Giselle to help him at the truck to keep up with orders.

According to Giselle, they were able to sell food to over 100 customers that day before closing an hour early. The busy days continued the rest of the week as well, and Giselle went back to where it all began in order to send a heartfelt thank you out to everyone who helped.

“Hey everyone!! We are overwhelmed with joy from all of the response and support we’ve been receiving,” Giselle tweeted. “It’s amazing what social media can do!! As of right now, it’s just one person fully working (my dad!) so PLEASE be patient with us, as we are trying to get orders out as quickly as possible,” she continued

Her tweet also explained that they were looking to hire more workers because business was doing so well.

“There were so many people, and [my dad] was kind of shocked because he didn’t think there would be a turn around that quickly,” Giselle said.

“It feels amazing because I was just trying to just help him,” she added. “Just being able to do something that’s going to give him business right now, that’s going to get him known.”

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