sell or close its 27 Taco Bell stores<\/a> within 12 months.<\/p>\nThis came as Taco Bell struggled to compete with local Mexican-themed chains Guzman y Gomez and Zambrero.<\/p>\n
Collins Foods on Tuesday announced it has agreed to sell 20 of the Taco Bell stores to Restaurant Brands Australia and an affiliate of the chain\u2019s parent company Yum! Brands.<\/p>\n
The remaining seven stores will be shut down, including six in Queensland and one in Victoria.<\/p>\n
It remains unclear how much Collins Foods sold the store for, however, the company noted it was at a \u201cnominal amount\u201d.<\/p>\n
Collins Foods expects to lose between $1m and $2m for the one-off cost of closing the remaining seven stores.<\/p>\n
Taco Bell Australia\u2019s general manager David Mantellini was optimistic about the future of the Mexican-themed chain despite its struggle in the local market.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe strongly believe in this market and are excited about the future with a clear focus on growing the brand to bring more Taco Bell restaurants to more Australians,\u201d Mr Mantellini said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis new partnership with (Restaurant Brands Australia) reinforces that we are here for the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sale is subject to Restaurant Brands Australia and Taco Bell finalising the terms of the partnership agreement and regulatory approvals.<\/p>\n
Collins Foods will continue to operate the 20 stores until the deal is finalised.<\/p>\n
All workers at the impacted stores will be offered positions under the new ownership.<\/p>\n
Collins Foods CEO Xavier Simonet said selling the Taco Bell stores will allow the fast-food operator to focus on its latest move to purchase eight KFCs in Bavaria and Germany for $52m.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will enable Collins Foods to focus on our core KFC business in Australia and Europe, including accelerating profitable development in Germany,\u201d Mr Simonet said.<\/p>\n
Prior to Collins Foods\u2019 stint with Taco Bell began in Australia in 2017, there was an attempt in the 1980s to bring the fast-food chain Down Under.<\/p>\n
Taco Bell was ordered to change its name after the owner of an Australian restaurant called \u201cTaco Bell\u2019s Casa\u201d sued the restaurant.<\/p>\n
It was then revived in Australia in 1997 before running out of steam in 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taco Bell\u2019s future in Australia has been saved after a major operator of the Mexican-themed chain agreed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,282409,282410,37911,87014,282408,282411,44,282412,265734,87016],"class_list":["post-575820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-burrito","tag-collins-foods","tag-fast-food","tag-kfc","tag-mexican-food","tag-nachos","tag-news","tag-restaurant-brands-australia","tag-taco","tag-taco-bell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}