FRESNO, CA (KMJ) – The Fresno Grizzlies are pushing the “Fresno Tacos” brand even further in 2017.
Just like last year, the Grizzlies will be the “Fresno Tacos” every Taco Tuesday home game. But, this year they will also be the “Fresno Tacos” if they’re on the road on a Tuesday.
The team’s big announcement of the day is that they now own the taco emoji. The Grizzlies adopted the emoji from Unicode Consortium by giving the organization a $5000 donation.
(Fresno, the “taco capital of the world”)
“When we found out it could be purchased, we sat around amongst ourselves and said ‘this thing belongs in Fresno,'” said Fresno Grizzlies’ General Manager Derek Franks. “We couldn’t live with ourselves if Taco Bell actually owned this beautiful taco emoji. So we swooped in and got it for Fresno. This is our gift to Fresno. We want to preserve it and have it here in the taco capital of the world.”
The Oakland A’s have done the same thing by adopting 3 other emojis (the baseball, tree and elephant). The Grizzlies said they may be open to re-sell the rights to the taco emoji, but for no less than $1 million.
Fans who tweet using the #FresnoTacos hashtag or the taco emoji can earn 15% off at the Grizzlies’ team store this week.
The Grizzlies’ also unveiled their Fresno Tacos uniforms for the 2017 season. They will don them every “Taco Tuesday” until this year’s Taco Throwdown. They’ll unveil those uniforms at a later date.
(Fresno “Tacos” 2017 uniforms)