One of Wichita’s Taco Tico restaurants has closed, but owner says he might look south

Several years ago, Greg White launched a small Taco Tico renaissance in Wichita, and by 2020, he was running three Wichita locations of the fast-food taco chain that’d been a longtime Wichita staple.

Recently, though, he closed one of the restaurants. Oct. 15 was the last day in business for the Taco Tico at 460 N. West St. that opened in 2018, and the sign on the marquee now directs customers to the restaurant at 1303 N. Tyler.

White said a number of factors led to his decision to close the West Street restaurant. The lease was up, he said, and the store wasn’t performing as well as he would have liked.

He also decided it was too close to the 13th and Tyler restaurant.

“I can tell you 500 different reasons. It wasn’t any one thing in particular,” he said. “It was a tough call. We didn’t want to leave. We put a bunch of money into that building.”

White, who’d reopened the Taco Tico at 13th and Tyler in 2014, chose a onetime Taco Tico building on West Street when he decided to expand again. The spot had been a Taco Tico until 2013, when the state seized it from former owner Ajax International Group for nonpayment of taxes. It then became one of many sad Taco Tico buildings sitting vacant around town. It reopened briefly as Angkor Donuts in 2015 but sat vacant for another year before White decided to return it to its Taco Tico roots.

In 2020, White also took over a vacant Taco Bueno building at 37th and Rock and turned it into a Taco Tico.

Both the 13th and Tyler and the 37th and Rock restaurants are doing well, he said, and just last week added online ordering (www.tacotico.us). White and his group — who also have Taco Ticos in El Dorado, Newton, Arkansas City, Derby and Augusta — said he’d consider adding another Wichita restaurant somewhere farther south.

“We’ve looked at a couple of different locations,” he said. “We aren’t leaving the market or anything.”