Baja Fresh Baja Fresh Mexican Grill Baja Fresh on the front page of the business section of the Pittsburgh Tribune Founded in 1990 and headquartered in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Baja Fresh (http://www.bajafresh.com) operates or franchises 289 restaurants nationwide, all featuring its fresh Mexican-inspired food, made to order an d served in a hurry. BrandMill helped lead Baja Fresh’s initial franchise expansion into Pennsylvania. To effectively launch a new restaurant brand, BrandMill promoted the unique restaurant experience of the franchisee team (former McDonald’s franchisees and a father and son team) and the ―fast casual‖ nature of the Mexican food brand to drive considerable media coverage which led to significant favorable brand awareness, sales and transactions. Working closely with a father and son franchise team, BrandMill helped them carve out a uniq ue marketing niche with a wide variety of public relations, media relations, pricing and promotional strategies and open three successful restaurants. After a few years, the family wanted to sell and break its long-term franchise agreement to retire from the restaurant business – costly and difficult to do – however, because of the marketing and operations success of the B aja Fresh brand throughout the Pittsburgh region, the parent company gladly bought back the franchisee rights. aja Fresh is a chain of fast-casual Tex Mex restaurants founded in Newbury Park, California in 1990 and headquartered in Cypress, California . [1] The chain emphasizes fresh ingredients, and each restaurant features a self-serve salsa bar. The chain operates 256 restaurants in 29 states , [2] and in 2010 opened a store at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. [2] Competitors include California Tortilla, Panchero's Mexican Grill, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Moe's Southwest Grill,Qdoba, Rubio's Fresh Mexican Grill, Tijuana Flats. [edit ]History In 1990, Jim and Linda Magglos took out a third mortgage on their hom e [3] and opened the first Baja Fresh in Newbury Park, California in the Conejo Valley with the vision of fast food, Mexican-style, that was not processed . [4] The result was a chain of restaurants where the customer would "never see a can opener " [4] — and the motto ―no microwaves, no can openers, no freezers, no lard and no MSG. ‖ [5] Franchising began In 1995, [3] and the chain had expanded to 31 outlets by 1997 . [6] In 1998, the Magglos worked with Greg Dollarhyde, who recapitalized the parent company, acquired venture capital and bought shares from outside holders to take control of Baja Fresh . [3] Dollarhyde then grew the chain from 45 locations in 1998 to 249 stores . [5] In 2002, Wendy's International purchased Baja Fresh for $275 million. [7] As a wholly owned subsidiary of Wendy's, the 249 restaurant chain [5] saw consistently declining same store sales. [5] In 2006, Wendy's sold the roughly 300-location Baja Fresh chain for $31 million to a