Chilango Brand Guidelines: The 2007 London Burrito Chain, Its Burrito Bonds & Tortilla

Two colleagues, a Mexico City nickname and a London menu.

Chilango is a London burrito chain founded in 2007 by Eric Partaker and Dan Houghton, who met while working at the internet-calling company Skype, according to English Wikipedia and an interview Partaker gave City A.M. in April 2019. Partaker had grown up eating Mexican food in Chicago, the paper reported, and saw room in London for a burrito restaurant; he told City A.M. that the pair set out to do two things, make a good product and wrap it in a brand people liked, a lesson he said they had taken from Skype.

The name is Mexican slang. English Wikipedia describes “chilango” as a demonym for people from Mexico City, defined by the Royal Spanish Academy and the Mexican Academy of Language as something belonging to the capital. Several theories trace the word to Nahuatl or Maya roots, and none of them is settled.

The chain stayed in London for most of its first decade. English Wikipedia dates its 11th branch, and the first outside the capital, to April 2016 in Manchester, and its 12th, in Birmingham, to October 2018. In April 2019 Partaker told City A.M. that Chilango had ten restaurants in London and one in Manchester. The paper’s reporter met him at the brightly decorated restaurant on Cannon Street in the City, and the interview described an unofficial “secret menu” of combinations worked out by regular customers from the standard fillings.

Chilango paid for much of that growth in an unusual way. In 2014 it sold a mini-bond through the crowdfunding platform Crowdcube, which the company styled the “Burrito Bond,” to more than 700 investors, and a second issue closed in April 2019 with almost 800 more, City A.M. reported. The paper explained at the time that such mini-bonds are unsecured and cannot be sold on; Partaker presented the bondholders as a body of brand supporters as well as lenders.

A CVA, an administration and two sales.

The bonds became the centre of the chain’s difficulties. In early December 2019 Chilango launched a company voluntary arrangement (CVA), a UK insolvency procedure that lets a company agree new terms with its creditors, City A.M. reported, with the restructuring firm RSM advising. On 6 January 2020 creditors and shareholders approved it. The plan cut rents at three of its 12 restaurants, gave up four leases on sites that were not trading, and converted the bondholders’ loans into preference shares, an option chosen by the large majority of the roughly 1,500 investors in the two issues. The two founders had already stepped down as co-chief executives, the paper reported, and a managing director took over the running of the business in February 2020.

The CVA did not save the original company. In July 2020, after restaurants across the country had been forced to close for months, Chilango told its shareholders that it would give notice of its intention to appoint administrators, City A.M. reported, and English Wikipedia dates its entry into administration to that month. On 27 August 2020 the administrators, RSM, sold the business to the investment group RD Capital Partners, also called RDCP Group, after a sale process; the deal kept 10 of its 11 restaurants open, and the managing director stayed on to lead it, the paper reported.

Under its new owner the brand leaned on delivery. When it changed hands again in 2022, Restaurant Online reported that Chilango ran eight restaurants, six of them in central London’s Zone 1 and one in Manchester, plus four delivery-only kitchens, three in London and one in Brighton.

Burrito chains on two continents.

Mexican and burrito fast-casual chains tend to present themselves through the counter as much as the sign. The format is usually the same in outline: a menu of burritos, bowls, tacos and nachos, a kitchen line where each order is made up in front of the customer, and a choice of eating in, taking away or ordering ahead. The Caterer described one Australian chain’s signature dishes in 2025 simply as “customisable burritos and bowls,” and companies in the category describe their own kitchens in terms of speed and made-to-order assembly.

Names in the category often borrow Spanish words or invented surnames, and the shortened form can matter as much as the full one. Guzman y Gomez, named after two of a founder’s childhood friends according to English Wikipedia, is generally shortened to three initials. The same company calls its head offices Hola Central, and Zambrero’s UK chief executive called the chain’s franchise partners the “Zam Fam” in 2025, so the naming habit often reaches past the menu into the business itself.

Visual identities in the category often lean on bright colour and hand-made graphic details, as the companies describe them. Guzman y Gomez says its logo letters are drawn to look like sticky tape, a nod to street art in Mexico, and Inside Retail reported in 2023 that Zambrero had moved to a brighter, more upbeat look for posters, decals, signage and menus while keeping its green colourway. In both cases a small set of colours and one recognisable graphic idea are meant to carry from the shop front to the menu board.

Behind the counters sit very different businesses: founder-owned franchisors, private-equity-backed groups, chains that have been through administration or Chapter 11, and companies listed on a stock exchange. Their corporate pages set out founding stories, founders and timelines of openings, while dated press and official records fill in owners, listings and closures.

A brand kept alive inside Tortilla.

On 23 May 2022 Chilango was bought from RDCP Group by Tortilla Mexican Grill plc, the London burrito chain that had listed on AIM in October 2021, Restaurant Online reported; both chains had started in 2007. Tortilla said at the time that it would keep the Chilango name at certain locations and through delivery from some of its own kitchens.

Most of the estate changed name within months. In August 2022 Tortilla began converting Chilango’s City of London sites, on Brushfield Street in Spitalfields, at London Wall and near London Bridge station, to its own brand, with Croydon Boxpark and Manchester to follow, while the restaurants on Upper Street in Islington and Brewer Street in Soho kept trading as Chilango, Restaurant Online reported. The Manchester restaurant on Oxford Street reopened as a Tortilla on 27 September 2022, the local site Taste of Manchester reported.

Chilango therefore survives as a small brand inside a larger group, not as an independent company. In November 2026 its website lists two restaurants, on Upper Street in Islington and on Chancery Lane, offering burritos, salad boxes and “hot boxes,” tacos and beer under the line “Mexican street eats,” and the company registration in its footer is that of Tortilla Mexican Grill plc, according to Companies House. The company that ran the chain from 2007 went into administration in 2020; the brand has been owned by RDCP from August 2020 and by Tortilla since May 2022.

For a design guide, Chilango shows how a restaurant name can outlast the company that built it, changing owners twice in two years and shrinking to a pair of restaurants while its menu carries on through delivery. Compare Chipotle, the American chain that, City A.M. noted in 2019, arrived in London after Chilango launched, and Barburrito, another British burrito chain. For this guide we use a chilli red, a warm black and a maize yellow with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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