Fiesta Restaurant Group is selling fast-casual Mexican restaurant Taco Cabana to YTC Enterprises, an affiliate of 400-unit, Jack in the Box, El Pollo Loco and Denny’s franchisee, Yadav Enterprises, Inc. for $85 million, according to an 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange on Thursday.
The sale will help pay for Taco Cabana’s debt totaling $74.6 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the third quarter in 2021.
“We made the strategic decision to sell the Taco Cabana business to allow our leadership team to focus completely on accelerating Pollo growth, and we are very excited about the tremendous growth opportunities we have for the Pollo Tropical business,” Fiesta Restaurant Group president and CEO Richard Stockinger said in a statement. “Anil Yadav, the CEO of Yadav Enterprises, has an impressive entrepreneurial background and is a highly-respected restaurant operator with a proven record of success across a variety of limited and full-service concepts. We are confident he will be an effective steward of the Taco Cabana brand for the long-term.”
As a result of the forthcoming sale, Fiesta Restaurant Group is investing its time and attention with Pollo Tropical, focusing on creating “an upgraded customer experience across all service channels, continuing to invest in expanding our growing digital platform and finalizing our new unit expansion plans targeted for 2022,” Stockinger continued.
As of July 1, 2021, there are 142 corporate Taco Cabana restaurants in Texas and six franchised Taco Cabana restaurants in New Mexico. Pollo Tropical has 143 U.S. units, according to the latest Firefly 500 data.
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