Steve took GYG to the US and failed. It cost $115 million, but he’s not done yet

Steve Marks, the fast-talking Guzman y Gomez co-founder and burrito salesman, likes to write. Lately, he’s penned plenty of notes about the topic that grabbed headlines late last week: the sudden capitulation of his $2 billion company’s ill-fated attempt to crack the United States, the world’s biggest fast food market, and his native country.

Some have called it hubris; others called it arrogance. Perhaps none have dedicated more thoughts or words to it than Marks himself.

“I’ve got pages and pages,” he says. “I write non-stop. For years and years, I have books and books that I write. I think about this business 24/7.”

He’s asked himself the same questions repeatedly: was Chicago the right city to launch the US venture in; was the real estate strategy right; should it have launched with different products? Marks has owned the Mexican-inspired restaurant chain’s hyper-ambitious, and now-failed, six-year gamble on the $643 billion market as his mistake. “I’m highly critical of myself,” he tells this masthead.

When pressed, he’ll skim over the details. If he could do it again, what city would he have picked? What should have been on the menu instead? “I don’t want to share that because some of that will come alive,” he says. “I gotta keep that up my sleeves.”

Marks doesn’t view the US exit as a failure. He says that, despite the early hiccups and missteps, he finally got it right, but he got there too late. It would have cost too much and taken too long to break even. The US expansion attempt had, over the years, become a massive cash drain on the broader business, which was otherwise firing on all cylinders.

“Pulling back now gives us the opportunity, in the years to come, to give it another crack,” says the former Wall Street hedge fund manager. “If it’s the right situation, the right model, [if] it’s the right time for GYG, you never know.

“The US is a market that I know one day we’ll be successful in. That’s really it.”

The first Guzman y Gomez store opened in Newtown in Sydney’s inner west in 2006, built on the dream of making fast food fresh and healthy. It would be another 14 years before Guzman y Gomez opened its first US store, in Naperville, Chicago, just in time for the COVID lockdowns. By this point, it had already gained a modest foothold in Singapore (2013) and Japan (2015).

The catalyst to launch into the US came after Guzman y Gomez opened its first drive-through in Queensland in 2015 and met lively demand for breakfast, lunch and dinner, igniting hope that its dual-track kitchen layout could handle high-volume American drive-throug