Taco Bueno Restaurants, Inc.

The court approved Taco Bueno’s disclosure statement and confirmed its joint prepackaged Chapter 11 plan roughly six weeks after the Nov. 6 filing, locking in an accelerated debt-to-equity restructuring led by Taco Supremo, LLC, a Sun Holdings affiliate source filing. The case covered Taco Bueno Restaurants, Inc. and nine affiliates, with the petition filed in the Northern District of Texas under Chapter 11 source filing.

The operating story was a regional Tex-Mex QSR chain with 140 company-owned stores, 29 franchised locations and about 2,600 employees across six states, but EBITDA had fallen from $33 million in 2016 to a projected $5.9 million for 2018 source filing. Taco Supremo had bought 100% of the secured debt, provided DIP financing and supported a plan converting funded debt into reorganized equity; the confirmation order found Taco Supremo held about $140 million of prepetition lender and DIP claims and approved the plan framework, including a committee settlement and GUC cash pool source filing. For restructuring professionals, the key takeaway is that this was not a free-fall restaurant case drifting toward a sale process: it exited the gate as a sponsor-backed prepack built around secured-debt ownership, lease-footprint optimization and operational continuity.