A little hamburger franchisee in Juárez has a formula for big success: Get away from the monsters.
Grupo Chihuahua bought the Juárez franchise of Silver Streak, an El Paso company, three years ago and started moving restaurants away from the saturated northern neighborhoods of the city.“We’re up against several monsters of the hamburger industry — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr. We’re focusing on the new, developing areas in the south, because the monsters are in the north,” said Jorge Palacios, director general.
The company bought the franchise from the Hernandez family, which owns the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Juárez. Many of the restaurants were in the red, Grupo Chihuahua officials said, and the new owners closed four of them, including one near the Campestre Country Club. They kept the one on Francisco Villa Avenue in Downtown Juárez and two others. They also opened a new restaurant on Santiago Troncoso Street, off De Las Torres Avenue in southeast Juárez on Oct. 18.
The plan is to open four or five new restaurants in 2008, the first as early as February, and grow to a total of 20 restaurants in the next three years.
Alan Simpson, founder, president and co-owner of Silver Streak, said he was happy to have found such an aggressive franchisee in Mexico, a place were he can see his company take off.
“We’ve been trying to establish ourselves in Juárez and further into Mexico because the market is wide open. (American) franchises have not found the formula yet,” Simpson said.
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