More Guzman Y Gomez stores are on the way.

In January 2020, the Aussie-based, Mexican cuisine restaurant chain opened its first store in the US, right in Chicago, Illinois. Having already established international stores in Singapore and Japan, the company has now extended its reach to the US, where founder and CEO Steven Marks is originally from.

GYG moved a team of around 40 people over to the US for its new store, which is complete with a double lane drive-through.

“We opened up and it was a huge success,” Marks told Business Insider Australia. “Obviously COVID hit hard, especially in the suburbs of Illinois, and without our double lane drive-through I think we’d be in a lot of trouble.”

GYG is also planning to open more stores in the US. Marks said they will be around 10 – 15 minutes away from initial store in Illinois to attract customers, adding “we like to build and cluster”.

“The opportunity in the US is massive,” he said. “And we’re hoping to sign two more leases by the end of December this year. So we’re growing.”

The year 2020 marks the one year anniversary of GYG’s ‘clean menu’. It also holds whispers of the company’s potential listing.

According the Australian Financial Review, documents filed with regulator ASIC indicated GYG switched from a proprietary company to an unlisted public company, which could be a sign of a looming IPO.

When asked about a possible listing, Marks was coy.

“It was a dream of mine since I was very young to bring a company public,” he said, despite business facing more scrutiny when they do so.

“I love GYG and I love our guests and I love the people that work at all our sectors throughout GYG. To give them the opportunity to own a share of GYG – that’s pretty amazing. And that’s a very special feeling as a founder and as someone who’s very entrepreneurial.”

He added that “if it happens or when it happens” that would be “awesome” but his team’s job is to continually open and run restaurants.

But, should the company go public, Marks confirmed that will happen in Australia. That’s compared to Australian tech giant Atlassian which listed on the US NASDAQ.

“No, we’d keep it at home,” Marks said. “We’re an Australian company – it would be an Australian listing.”

Around four months ago, GYG opened what it calls La Cucina (which means The Kitchen) around the corner from its office in Sydney. This houses kitchens where GYG tests and creates its products.

“We spend so much time there playing with food and tasting food,” Marks explained. “Because one thing you know when you when you want to open up restaurants, you have to have a discipline of what you keep on the menu or what you take off. So we’re very careful because the worst thing to do is just continually to add stuff and then increase complexity of operations. That means execuxtion starts to fall.

“So I have a very good discipline of what we put on the menu and what we take off.”

He added that GYG has “got some truly exciting things coming through the pipeline.”

One of the company’s goals is to ramp up the breakfast, lunch and dinner served through its drive-throughs. And while Marks isn’t a fan of plant-based meat, GYG is set to release a product that is made of vegetables.

GYG has six more stores planned for Australia by the end of the year and one more in January. There are even more on the way in the next year and a half.

“GYG throughout the last five to six years has evolved and evolved,” Marks said. “Right now we’ve close to 40 drive-throughs in Australia and we have a pipeline of probably another 40 that’ll open up in 18 months.”

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