In 2022, Roll Em Up Taquitos launched its first Texas location in the Dallas suburb of Garland. The California-based restaurant chain opened another location two years later in the Heights neighborhood of Houston. But both restaurants would quietly shutter a year after opening.
But today, Roll Em Up Taquitos has also gone quiet, though at an inopportune time: it’s fielding litigation and accusations of fraud from multiple disgruntled franchisees in two states.
Ryan Usrey and his family opened the first Roll Em Up Taquitos in Chino Hills, Calif., in 2019. According to court documents, the company began an active franchising push in late 2020-21. Eventually, there were Roll Em storefronts around California, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas.
Things apparently started to break down when in 2024, New Mexico franchisees FMP Ventures and Reserve Industries filed a lawsuit against Roll Em Up, accusing Usrey’s company of breach of contract. In FMP and Reserve’s complaint, the groups agreed in 2021 to buy the rights to operate a franchise location in Las Vegas. Two years later, FMP and Reserve said they had wanted to exit the business and sell back the rights to Usrey and Roll Em Up. FMP and Reserve said they made a deal with Usrey and Roll Em Up to sell the rights for roughly $800,000, but the latter never made those payments and, instead, sold the franchise to a different company.
Usrey and Roll Em Up countersued, alleging FMP and Reserve did not honor the conditions of the sales agreement, had mismanaged the store and allowed drugs—including cocaine and marijuana—to be used and sold at the location.
In 2025, a group of five franchisees filed a complaint in California state court against Ursey and Roll Em Up, alleging they were lied to about the restaurant’s numbers, essentially calling the operation a kind of “Ponzi scheme” wherein money from the franchisees were used to fund the parent company and recruit more franchisees. One of the specific complaints they had: they alleged the company misled them into thinking the taquitos were made fresh and in-store daily.
“Plaintiffs were consistently supplied with taquitos that were clearly frozen from questionable supplies,” the complaint read. “Further, plaintiffs are informed and believe and therefore allege that one or more of the corporate stores were being supplied with taquitos that were not being made at a ‘proprietary kitchen’ but instead were being made at a personal residence without any quality control, inspection, or oversight.”
According to the complaint, three California Roll Em Up stores ended up closing and others never became profitable.
Meanwhile, and unrelated to the litigation, the Garland and Houston Roll Em Up locations closed sometime in 2023 and ’25, respectively. The franchise operator of the shuttered Houston location has yet to respond to Chron’s request for comment. Roll Em Up has not responded, either.
Litigation in both California and New Mexico is ongoing, but with a twist. In New Mexico, attorneys for Ursey and Roll Em Up have withdrawn from the case, and the defendants have gone dark, not responding to court filings or hiring new attorneys. In California, the franchisees filed the complaint but have been unable to find Ursey to formally serve him the lawsuit. If they don’t try, the judge could throw the case out. Conversely, the judge could also allow them to leave papers at Ursey’s home or business or publish a notice in the media, like a newspaper.
Either way, both cases could be headed for a default judgement if Ursey doesn’t show up.
So far, the original Chino Hills, Rancho Cucamonga and Lebec Roll Em Up locations appear to still be open.