How to set up a taco bar for a party

Looking to set up a Build Your Own Taco Bar for a party or for a fun family dinner? You’ve come to the right place! In this post I’ll show you how to set up a taco bar for a party and give you some ideas for side items as well!

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If you and your friends/family love tacos like we do, you might want to set up a Build Your Own Taco Bar at your next party for a fun dinner treat! We decided that we would have a Taco Bar for dinner for the guest at our son’s first birthday party last year and it was a hit! Everyone loved it.

Jackson’s birthday party was a Mickey Pumpkin Birthday Party so that’s why everything in the post is Mickey Pumpkin theme but you can change it up however you want. Theme or no theme, a Build your own taco bar is great because everyone gets to decide how they want their dinner made!

We set up the food table with everything our guest would need to make tacos as well as a few side items like corn on the cob for street corn and saffron rice.

We set up a station next to the food table on the grill that held all of the plates, napkins and utensils. I even made sure to set out some bowls in case anyone wanted to make a taco salad.

I made this Taco Bar sign on picmonkey.com (it’s an editing program), printed it out onto cardstock and stuck it into a frame to serve as the menu for the party. It was pretty easy to make but if you want to download and print the one I made, just click here. You should be able to right click and save it.

I set the menu up on a cake stand so it would be easy to see and would stand out when guest were walking up to the table. I always think it’s a great idea to let guest know that all is on the table so they have an idea of what they want to save room for on their plate.

What to use for a taco bar:

For our taco bar, we set out hard taco shells and soft taco shells for everyone to make their own taco creations. We also had bowls for taco salads because we have some gluten free members of the family.

The taco meat was the same taco meat we use for our Corn and Rice Tacos, which pretty much just ground beef, taco seasoning and water. We kept the taco meat warm in a crockpot on the table.

FOR TACO TOPPINGS WE SET OUT:

Lettuce
Cheese
Diced Tomatoes
Salsa
Sour Cream
Black Beans

Taco Bar Side Items:

Because I love side items, I had to make sure that we had some of the taco bar.

We decided on street corn and saffron rice as the side items for the party.

I found these little menu cards at Party City and just wrote out the direction on how to make street corn with cotija cheese and mayo. (Don’t knock it until you try it, it’s AMAZING)

We kept the corn on the cob and the saffron rice warm in crockpots on the table and let everyone help themselves to whatever they wanted.

Make sure to set out serving utensils for everything what will need to be scooped or picked up. I bought all of the serving utensils for the party at the Dollar Tree.