{"id":473922,"date":"2026-09-24T06:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T06:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/473922\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T06:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T06:28:10","slug":"visalia-tahoe-joes-closes-as-chain-shrinks-to-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/473922\/","title":{"rendered":"Visalia Tahoe Joe\u2019s closes as chain shrinks to two"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s one less place to get a steak dinner in Visalia as Tahoe Joe\u2019s Famous Steakhouse<\/a> continues cutting down.<\/p>\n

The long-declining 31-year-old Central Valley franchise now has only two locations, Fresno and Bakersfield.<\/p>\n

The state of the franchise<\/p>\n

The Visalia Tahoe Joe\u2019s closed quietly Monday, Sept. 21, with no social media announcement but an update on the restaurant\u2019s website noting the closure.<\/p>\n

The franchise was started in 1995 by noted Central Valley restaurateur David Fansler<\/a>, who also founded Pismo\u2019s Coastal Grill<\/a>, Westwood\u2019s BBQ & Spice Co<\/a>. and Yosemite Ranch<\/a>. Fansler sold Tahoe Joe\u2019s to Fresh Acquisitions, the parent company of Old Town Buffet, which held the franchising rights until going through bankruptcy in 2021.<\/p>\n

From there, BBQ Holdings bought Tahoe Joe\u2019s at auction for $5.2 million, according to reports at the time. There were five Tahoe Joe\u2019s restaurants still open when BBQ Holdings acquired it; the San Luis Obispo restaurant closed just months before the purchase was announced.<\/p>\n

Tahoe Joe\u2019s changed hands again when MTY Food Group acquired BBQ Holdings a year later, and two more locations closed during the acquisition: Rocklin and Roseville. MTY, a multinational corporation, still holds the rights to Tahoe Joe\u2019s and lists it on its website as one of the company\u2019s many American brands, including Baja Fresh Mexican Grill, Cold Stone Creamery, Papa Murphy\u2019s and Wetzel\u2019s Pretzels.<\/p>\n

The last two Tahoe Joe\u2019s locations are at 7006 N Cedar Ave. in Fresno and 9000 Ming Ave. in Bakersfield. The original Fresno Tahoe Joe\u2019s location, which was at 2700 West Shaw Ave., closed in 2016, and the spot was later taken over by Culichi Town, a Sinaloa-style Mexican restaurant which also closed<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Related Stories from Fresno Bee<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Amber Hair<\/a><\/p>\n

The Fresno Bee<\/p>\n

Amber Hair (they\/them) is the food and restaurants reporter and influencer. Amber has been in professional journalism for more than a decade, writing for outlets like the Orlando Sentinel, The Villages Daily Sun, the Pacific Coast Business Times and others. In their spare time, they enjoy going to concerts, reading and spending time with their cats.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s one less place to get a steak dinner in Visalia as Tahoe Joe\u2019s Famous Steakhouse continues cutting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-473922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}