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The California company dates back over 60 years and was owned by Jack in the Box
Yadav Enterprises finalized a deal this week to purchase all 550 Del Taco restaurants from parent company Jack in the Box for $115 million in cash. The San Diego-based hamburger giant paid $585 million for America’s second-largest Mexican restaurant chain just three years ago. “We are confident we have entered into a transaction with the right steward for Del Taco in its next chapter of evolution,” CEO Lance Tucker said in a statement.
Yadav, whose company is headquartered near San Jose, already owns more than 300 franchised restaurants, including Denny’s, TGI Friday’s, El Pollo Loco and Corner Bakery locations. The company also owns golf resorts in Northern California, near Oceanside and in India.
CEO Anil Yadav has been in the restaurant business for more than 30 years, starting his career as a fry cook for Jack in the Box in the 1980s. “I grew up with seven siblings in one home trying to make ends meet,” Yadav told Franchising.com. “Those days I wasn’t working to thrive, I was working to survive.” After working his way up through the restaurant, he bought his first unit at age 25 in 1989. By 2017 his companies were earning $625 million every year. Today, Yadav lives in Alameda County. He’s the former president of the Indo-American Associations of Northern California and once headed his local cricket club.
Del Taco was founded in 1964 by Ed Hackbarth, a former employee of Taco Bell founder Glen Bell. “I helped several of my competitors get started,” Bell said in his 1999 biography Taco Titan. “People seem to think we ought to hate each other, but we’ve stayed good friends.”
Glen Bell opened his first Taco Bell in Downey but had experimented with other restaurants in San Bernardino before he hit it big. The Inland Empire town was ground zero for the fast food revolution after the McDonald brothers set up shop there in 1940. Curious food folks came from all corners, trying to understand the new phenomenon and develop their own takes on the new way of eating. The fast food revolution of the 1950s was born at the corner of 14th & E Streets at the world’s first McDonald’s. Today that site is a museum dedicated to the company.
The Del Taco deal is expected to close early next year and gives Jack in the Box some financial breathing room. “This divestiture is an important step in returning to simplicity,” Jack in the Box CEO Lance Tucker said in a statement. “We look forward to focusing on our core Jack in the Box brand.”
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Chris Nichols
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