Tijuana Flats founder Brian Wheeler reacts to his first restaurant's closure
Brian Wheeler, a local entrepreneur who achieved legendary status thanks to his incredibly popular taco chain, heard sad news about the restaurant he opened in 1995: The first Tijuana Flats — at 7608 University Blvd. — was permanently shuttered.
On April 19, Orlando Business Journal reported that AUA Private Equity sold the company to Mississippi-based Flatheads LLC, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and closed 11 stores — including the company’s original Winter Park spot.
Wheeler sold Tijuana Flats to AUA Private Equity Partners LLC in 2015, and no longer has any involvement in its operations. Still, nostalgia set in when he learned the University Blvd. eatery wouldn’t open its doors again.
“It took me eight or nine months to get the place open, with all the labor from friends and family," he recalled. "I didn’t have any money for a general contractor or anything. We literally tore up floors, put the walls in, everything. I had covered up the windows with brown paper so no one could see inside. The night before we opened, I was in the restaurant doing the final touches. I took down the brown paper and stared into the empty parking lot and wondered to myself, ‘Will I ever be able to fill those parking spots?’”
He did.
By 2001, he had six locations. By 2004, 18 locations, and that grew to 65 by 2009 and 90 in 2013.
When Wheeler sold Tijuana Flats, he already had launched Tibby’s New Orleans Kitchen, and since then has gone on to open another Tex-Mex concept, Big Taco.
