Tijuana Flats Restaurants, LLC emerged from chapter 11 on March 18, 2025, when its Joint Chapter 11 Plan became effective and was substantially consummated, closing an eleven-month case that restructured the Florida fast-casual Tex-Mex operator around a cash-collateral-funded going concern.
The Debtors — Tijuana Flats Restaurants, LLC and subsidiary TJF Franchise Group, LLC — filed voluntary chapter 11 petitions on April 19, 2024 in the Middle District of Florida (Voluntary PetitionDkt. 1), having already closed 11 underperforming corporate locations and consolidated subsidiary operations in the run-up to filing. The company operates 65 corporate-owned Florida restaurants alongside 26 franchised units run through TJF Franchise, and reported roughly $120 million in 2023 revenue with approximately 1,500 employees. The filing was precipitated by compressed margins from rising food and labor costs, menu-change cost overruns, heavy interest-reserve payments to Truist Bank, and accumulated accounts payable and tax obligations, all landing on a balance sheet anchored by a single first-lien secured creditor.
That secured creditor, LSC2022, LLC, held approximately $18.8 million in first-lien term and revolving loans — the Debtors' only meaningful funded debt — secured by a blanket lien on all assets perfected in Delaware and Florida and maturing in March 2027. Just before the petition, ownership had transitioned from AUA Private Equity Partners to Flatheads LLC, an affiliate of LSC2022. With no DIP facility sought, the case ran entirely on cash collateral: the Debtors moved immediately for emergency authority to draw on LSC2022's cash collateral under a 13-week budget (), with adequate protection structured as a replacement lien and a section 507(b) superpriority administrative claim subject to a $200,000 professional carve-out. The schedules filed shortly after reflected the concentrated, single-lender capital structure ().
The case then moved briskly to a consensual resolution. The Debtors filed their joint plan and disclosure statement in November 2024, the court confirmed the plan in January 2025, and the Debtors noticed the effective date and substantial consummation as March 18, 2025 — at which point the cash-collateral authority terminated and the reorganized enterprise continued operating its restaurant footprint. With the plan substantially consummated, the matter now sits in the post-effective-date administration and final-reporting phase.
