Bagels wrote: ↑April 26th, 2024, 5:56 pm
Brian Lutz wrote: ↑April 26th, 2024, 11:04 am
Bagels wrote: ↑April 26th, 2024, 9:11 am
Useless trivia- millennials became the first generation whose go-to food was not Italian. We prefer Mexican… but Gen Z prefers Asian. Tastes are diversifying.
Mexican remains quite popular, but it's a bit of an odd situation when it comes to chain restaurants in that there really aren't any significant nationwide sit-down Mexican chains, and the vast majority of places in any given area are likely to be locally owned.
Probably the closest thing you have to a national chain in that space is On The Border at around 150 restaurants (only 8 of those are west of Denver and 25 of them are in the Dallas/Fort Worth area), but the vast majority of Mexican places in any given area seem to be either single locations or small local chains with only a handful of restaurants, plus a few regional chains (Azteca in the Seattle area is a good example of this with 15 locations in Washington, or Mi Pueblo in Charlotte and the Triad is another one with around 10 locations now.) Chi-Chi's was once quite prominent in this space but is now long since extinct, and Chevy's is down to 16 locations.
Fast Casual "Fresh-Mex" places like Chipotle, Qdoba, Baja Fresh, Cafe Rio, and Moe's seem to be where these are proliferating, although I've been less than impressed with a lot of these.
How many restaurants did Chevy's / El Torito have at their peak? Hard to believe Chevy's is down to 16.
I think Mexican is a challenge because there's so many local dive restaurants that are cheap. I love a fajita from El Torito, but at over $40 (including service charge, tax and tip), I'll go to some dive restaurant in Santa Ana for an equally good meal at less than half the price.
El Torito was founded as an authentic Mexican restaurant, but now under generic corporate ownership they are dwindling. What is unfortunate is the corporation that runs them now, Xperience Restaurant Group, has wasted incredible amounts of money trying to expand new Mexican concepts outside of SoCal and has failed dismally. They opened a Solita in Chicago at great expense and it barely stayed open for 12 months, millions of dollars wasted. They opened a SOL in the back corner downstairs at the Shops at Caesars Palace mall and it not only looks cold and bleak but also dead inside, they had maybe two customers while the Joe's Seafood on the other side of the escalator was fully booked for reservations and had recently expanded (Joe's being the famous stone crab and key lime pie place from Florida). I expect that Caesars location to close very soon.
So then they wind up closing the remaining El Torito sites, many of which are owned real estate which they need to liquidate or sublease desperately to keep the company afloat. The long gone OC Weekly had an article about ten years ago about the founder Larry Cano and his quest to build an empire of Mexican restaurants that also created real job opportunities for Mexican-American people at every level including Executive Chef, Director, General Manager and so forth at a time when it was unheard of for immigrants to be in those positions. There were hundreds of El Torito restaurants across the country and now there are barely any left after his death, and they're indistinguishable from the other generic concepts the chain runs like Chevys and Acapulco. At one point they were also running a very upscale concept called El Torito Grill which had locations in Brea, Torrance, Irvine, and the flagship in Fashion Island. The food was fantastic, more of a modern reinventing of Mexican-American that was spicier and fresher, but the corporate people dumbed it down and slashed the quality. All but one have closed now, and the SOL concept intended to replace it is not much better but far more expensive. I am not sure El Torito is going to be around much longer, I could see the remaining locations closed by this brainless corporation in the next 18 to 24 months as they keep looking for a fast buck only to lose millions of dollars at a time.
When Baja Fresh was first opening up, their food was absolutely fabulous. I used to eat at one of their first stores in Long Beach when they had less than ten locations. Fresh everything prepared to order with all the meats fire grilled in small batches every few minutes. I remember when the lines were out the door every lunchtime and evening. But they were killed by overexpansion, franchising, and then the final death blow came from being acquired by Wendy's who immediately implemented commissary made foods, shelf stable tortillas, factory made sauces and marinades, factory chips and so on. They never recovered from Wendy's.