Could tacos become an incentive to learn Spanish faster?

Duolingo plans to open a restaurant in Pittsburgh in the United States within a month Image: Gulcin Ragiboglu / Getty Images©

What if you were offered free tacos and tortillas as long as you spoke Spanish when ordering in a restaurant? Your ability to speak the language of Cervantes would improve in no time, wouldn't it? That's the aim of a soon-to-be-opened restaurant in the United States.

It's a PR stunt—we'll give you that. But you have to admit that the idea is particularly well thought out, not only to get the word out about the brand, but also to prove that the restaurant of the future will be dedicated to multitasking. The Duolingo smartphone and tablet app, which boasts 42 million mobile users a month, has built its freemium business model around learning 19 languages. Sometimes between the virtual world and reality there's just a short distance, and here the company has brought them together. It plans to open a restaurant in Pittsburgh in the United States within a month, according to the specialist media outlet Restaurantbusiness.

So what does dining have to do with learning a language? The app actually plans to improve its users' level of Spanish by offering them gifts and discounts. When ordering in this restaurant, called Duo's Taqueria, which will obviously be dedicated to a Hispanic-themed menu centered around tacos and tortillas, customers will have the choice to participate in a challenge, answering a question in Spanish. The prize for doing it right is 10 or 20 percent off the menu, or a free order of a taco or chips.

The initiative seems surprising for an app. However, the famous online dating app Bumble had the idea first when it opened a café that also doubled as a wine bar. The venture began last year in New York.