It has developed, owned and operated over 60 full service independent and national chain restaurants, and several fine casual eateries. Today the Greer Group is an operator of multiple hotel chains including Marriott, Hilton and InterContinental. Phil Greer started out as a PE teacher, Johnson said, and grew the Greer Group through careful investments and hard work. “I think they think if we can do what we’re doing with what we have now, it’s something that people will gravitate towards.” “It’s a really small store, and it still does a heck of a business,” he said. The Greers learned about Tico from that Lexington store, Johnson said. So there are a couple of survivors in Kentucky, there’s one in Louisville, and there’s one in Lexington still.” “Since he did that, the brand just dissolved in Kentucky, because people wanted Tico – they didn’t want something else. “The franchisee had an issue with the franchisor, or with the franchise itself, so he tried changing the name and changing the recipes,” Johnson said. Taco Tico much had a larger presence in Kentucky, which is gone today. “It’s not easy doing everything from scratch in your store, but I think it’s the way to go.” You’re hoping it wasn’t their first time in,” Johnson said. ![]() “It’s not even throwing away the meat it’s usually two or three hours before we notice it, and people got product that doesn’t taste right. The franchise, now headquartered in Fort Dodge, is expanding into multiple locations in Kentucky through Greer Companies. Ritzy’s than usual for at least a solid week.Nicholas Haack grates cheese as Taco Tico prepares for another day on a recent morning. The news that it’s set to become a reality had me acting more weirdly obsessive about both Taco Tico and G.D. Ritzy’s is a combination of my two favorite fast food brands that had only occurred in my wildest fantasies. I visited that very building last spring on my trip to every operating Ritzy’s. They’re planning widespread expansion starting with a second Lexington location across town in a building that was originally a G.D. Longtime Cheddar’s franchisee, The Greer Companies, purchased the Lexington Taco Tico earlier this year along with a 10% stake in the entire Taco Tico brand. Had my exposure at an early age caused me to develop Stockholm Syndrome for the Taco meat everyone else hated?įor better or worse, the next major event in Taco Tico’s history is set to happen in Lexington Kentucky. Were the Iowa Taco Ticos still using the 1988 vintage recipe, the Taco Tico equivalent of New Coke, or was I raised on the supposedly inferior meat recipe in Kentucky? My parents would have started taking me to the Lexington area Taco Ticos right around 1988. ![]() ![]() The change proved unpopular, and was quickly reverted to the original. Taco Tico’s Wikipedia page states there was a change in the meat recipe implemented following Dan Foley’s sale of the brand to a former KFC executive 1988. The restaurants are loosely associated today with each owner running a separate website, many of which show nonstandard menu items supplementing the classic tacos and burritos. Most of the Wichita area Ticos that were forced to close by the state have since re opened, and today, a total of 17 Taco Tico locations are open for business, nine in Kansas, plus two each in Oklahoma, Iowa, and Kentucky, one in Louisiana, and one in Texas. This marked the low point in Taco Tico history, and while things aren’t much better today, there is a faint glow of a bright future for Taco Tico. In 2013, following decades of slow decline and shrinking location count, ten company-owned, Wichita area Taco Tico locations were forced to close by the Kansas department of revenue due to their failure to remit sales tax revenue back to the state, leaving only a handful of franchised locations, including the two in Kentucky, open for business. This has been my go-to Taco Tico for more than 15 yearsĭan Foley opened the first Taco Tico in Wichita, Kansas in 1962, and there were once 120 locations all over the Midwestern and Southeastern United States.
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