On Main Street, most restaurants have a rhythm. Dinner rush, cleanup, and lights out. Fourth Taco runs differently.

The music is loud at all times. Regulars sit shoulder to shoulder at the bar, catching up with the bartender. Groups of college students crowd tables covered in California-style Mexican food.

Some nights, the tables are pushed back entirely. A drag queen steps into the spotlight. The room fills to capacity.

For owner Tanner Dilge, opening a restaurant in downtown Bloomsburg wasn’t even the original plan.

“I opened up a restaurant on Main Street in 2018 with my business partner,” he said. “And that went really bad, really poorly, because Covid-19 happened six months later.”

Like so many small business owners, Dilge watched momentum evaporate almost overnight. The experience soured his entire experience with cooking. He stepped away from restaurants for two years.

But Bloomsburg had a way of pulling him back home.

After flipping a house at exactly the right time, “the perfect storm,” he called it, Dilge and his wife decided to try again. But this time on wheels. Their food truck debuted at the Bloomsburg Fair. When the season ended, a familiar storefront caught his eye.

“I have always wanted to have a restaurant here,” he said of the current location. “It’s the perfect spot.” Fourth Taco is the only storefront that doesn’t face another business. 

From the start, Fourth Taco was built around college energy. Originally open from 4 p.m. to 3 a.m., Thursday through Saturday, the restaurant leaned heavily into the student bar crowd.

“That got old very quick,” Dilge admitted. “I was working 12 and a half hours a day… just repeating that.”

The shift came when they secured a limited distilling license and built out a bar program. That decision changed everything. Suddenly, it wasn’t just students walking through the door; it was friends, regulars, locals who had known Dilge since childhood.

“Everybody knows my family. Everybody knows me,” he said. Born and raised in Bloomsburg, Dilge has watched downtown change in real time. Longtime owners retired, new businesses opened, and friendships were formed across storefronts.

He counts Project Pizza down the street among his close relationships, and he’s mentored newer business owners navigating borough codes and electrical hiccups. Recently, he and his wife acquired Café Martha’s, expanding their footprint while keeping the focus local.

But if you ask Dilge what really keeps the lights on, it’s not expansion.

“Our regulars keep us in business,” he states.

Over the years, Fourth Taco has quietly become more than a restaurant. It’s a community hub that hosts sold-out drag shows, supports fundraisers, and hosts private celebrations.

The drag events, in particular, have become a cornerstone of the space. Many of the performers were first-timers when they approached Dilge.

“They were like, ‘We want to try to do this.’ We gave them the space. We said absolutely.”

Now, tickets sell out in fifteen minutes.

“It’s electric,” he said. “It’s really nice to see the community come together for something like that.”

In a time when LGBTQ+ spaces often feel precarious, Fourth Taco has become intentionally protective. Dilge noted that harassment has been rare, a testament to the culture they’ve cultivated inside their walls.

Community support flows both ways. In the last three weeks alone, Fourth Taco has donated over $780 to local organizations, including student groups and the high school drama department. A current “Dine to Donate” initiative benefits the Global Student Society.

For Dilge, that reciprocity is the point.

“Treat your people well. Keep your community safe, and the people that you employ happy,” he said. “They’ll always take care of your hands.”

That philosophy has been hard-earned. This is the seventh business he’s helped open and the fourth he’s owned. He’s learned lessons the hard way, including reading leases carefully after a sewer backup forced him to clean and pay for damage he didn’t cause.

But more importantly, he’s learned that if you take care of your people, they take care of you.