LOS ANGELES – For National Hispanic Heritage Month, which begins today, the California-based restaurant chain El Pollo Loco has turned to Snapchat and augmented reality to celebrate.

El Pollo Loco, which has nearly 500 stores in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Utah and Louisiana, is looking to bring back lost Latino-themed murals in downtown Los Angeles, if only in virtual form.

Beginning Sunday, open the Snapchat smartphone app, tap on the background to activate the World Lenses feature, and point the phone at the now blank wall. With that, the old murals come back to life on the screen.

"We really didn't want to lose that culture," says El Pollo Loco CEO Bernard Acoca. The campaign runs for a month.

Interviewed in a booth at the first El Pollo Loco restaurant, circa 1980, in downtown Los Angeles, Acoca said the murals went away because of gentrification, but he looks to bring them back by having the original artists repaint the originals outside his L.A. stores.

The Snapchat lens will work on five blank walls in downtown Los Angeles. You can find the locations by visiting the website Lostmuralsla.com.

Listen to the complete interview with Acoca on the Talking Tech podcast by clicking the link below.

Follow USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham (@jeffersongraham) on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.