Victor Jules Bergeron, Jr. (December 10, 1902 in San Francisco – October 11, 1984 in Hillsborough, California) founded a chain of Polynesian-themed restaurants that bore his nickname, "Trader Vic".

[2] On November 17, 1934, using $500 in borrowed money, Bergeron opened a small bar/restaurant across from his parents' grocery store at San Pablo Avenue and 65th Street[3] in the Golden Gate District of Oakland.

As its popularity spread, the menu and decor developed an increasingly tropical flair, and Hinky Dink's soon became Trader Vic's.

[9] As of 2024, there are three Trader Vic's restaurants in the United States, one in Europe, ten in the Middle East, two in Asia, and one in Africa.

The Trader Vic's Corporation has also franchised restaurants and bars under the names the Mai Tai Lounge (all locations defunct), Trader Vic's Island Bar & Grill (opened 2010 in Sarasota, Florida, shuttered in 2013 – where the company experimented with a Margaritaville-like concept), and Señor Pico.

[17][18] The song "Werewolves of London," a Top 40 hit co-written by Warren Zevon and appearing on his 1978 album Excitable Boy, contains the line "I saw a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic's.

In the New York Times bestseller and 2012 100 Notable Books, Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter, Trader Vic's in Seattle Washington is the setting of a scene between two characters in September 1967.

In Chapter 16, "After the Fall" a couple meet at Trader Vic's and one walks "into a burst of warm air and bamboo, tiki and totem, dugout canoe hung from the ceiling."