Guzman y Gomez permanently closed all of its U.S. restaurants on May 22, ending a six-year run that never got beyond eight Chicago-area locations. The shutdown wiped out the chain’s entire American business at once, even after the company had recently signaled it still wanted to grow in the market.
Steven Marks said the company’s U.S. business was not generating strong enough returns to justify continued investment, and that it was unlikely to deliver the kind of performance needed to support more shareholder capital. He said he had spent the last three months in the United States assessing the business and concluded it would take far more time and money than expected. The chain’s website said, “All GYG USA restaurants permanently closed” and noted that, effective from May 22nd, the restaurants would cease trading.
Guzman y Gomez launched U.S. operations in 2020 with plans for a nationwide presence that could eventually have reached hundreds of restaurants. Instead, it opened just eight sites, all in the Chicago area, including Bucktown, Schaumburg, Evanston, Crystal Lake, Deerfield, Buffalo Grove and Des Plaines. The company remains active in Australia, Singapore and Japan, where it operates more than 260 restaurants.
The closure leaves no American footprint for the Australia-based Mexican chain, despite its earlier ambition to build something much larger in the United States. Its own messaging underscored the abruptness of the exit: “After six years of burritos and big dreams in Chicagoland, we’ve made the difficult decision to close our US restaurants,” the company said in an Instagram post, while its website thanked guests and staff and told customers to look for their favorites overseas.
What the company has not said is whether it plans to return to the U.S. market later. For now, the answer to Guzman y Gomez US closure is final: every American restaurant is gone, and the chain is leaving Chicago after six years with nothing on the board to replace it.
