Iconic ’90s Tex-Mex Restaurant Chain Files for Bankruptcy

No restaurant chain is safe from declining revenue, and another big one is taking the Chapter 11 bankruptcy dive.

Nation's Restaurant News is reporting that nationally-franchised Tex-Mex restaurant On the Border Mexican Grill and Cantina has officially filed for bankruptcy.

The chain was very popular in the 1990s and early 2000s.

If you think that you owe a lot of people money, get this: The restaurant brand owes more than 10,000 creditors more than $24 million.

Whoops.

Their bankruptcy filing was driven by the economic issues in America, labor shortages and the results of 40 underperforming stores, which have now been closed.

This is actually a little worse than it looks on the surface, though: On the Border has asked the court to allow the company to break the leases for the non-operational stores.

When you're asking the court for forgiveness, you know things are serious.

On the Border has had issues since at least 2020, when they noticed sales declining — a common problem during the pandemic. So, they hired a new CEO, who promised to turn things around. Unfortunately, the opposite happened.

While On the Border's sales dropped 3 percent in 2023 in same-store sales, their competitors in the same category saw 11.8 percent growth and 11.4 percent unit growth in 2023.

On the Border also has products in grocery stores, though it's not clear how those will be affected.