Guzman y Gomez Brand Guidelines: Newtown 2006, Sticky-Tape Letters and the ASX

Two New Yorkers and a King Street shopfront.

Guzman y Gomez began in Sydney. English Wikipedia and the company’s own history give 2006 as the founding year; ABC News, in a June 2024 explainer by business reporter Kate Ainsworth, said the business was founded in 2005 and opened its first restaurant in the inner-west suburb of Newtown in October 2006. The founders were Steven Marks and Robert Hazan, childhood friends from New York whose careers had brought them to Australia. ABC News described Marks as a former hedge fund manager and Hazan as someone who had worked in retail and fashion wholesale.

The name belongs to neither founder. English Wikipedia says the pair named the business after two of Marks’s childhood friends, and the company’s about page says the name was chosen to honour friends from their youth. The full name, with the Spanish “y” for “and,” is usually shortened to GYG, the three letters that later became its code on the Australian Securities Exchange. English Wikipedia quotes Marks describing the food he wanted to serve as “urban, street and hot.”

The first restaurant was on King Street, Newtown, English Wikipedia says, and restaurants in Bondi Junction and Kings Cross followed within a year. By April 2012 there were 12, and the first in Melbourne’s central business district opened in November 2012. Expansion abroad started at the end of 2013 in Singapore, followed by Tokyo in April 2015, according to English Wikipedia and the company. The company says its first drive-through opened in Nerang, on the Gold Coast, in 2015.

Ownership widened step by step. English Wikipedia says the founders first funded the business themselves, and in 2009 sold a minority stake to three people who had previously been involved with McDonald’s Australia; one of them, Guy Russo, became chairman. The investment firm TDM Growth Partners bought a stake in August 2018, and later share sales in 2020 and 2022 brought in Magellan Financial Group and then an entity owned by Barrenjoey Capital Partners, English Wikipedia says.

Burritos to order, and letters made of tape.

The menu is built around burritos, bowls, tacos and nachos. ABC News wrote in 2024 that GYG served them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, seven days a week, through dine-in, takeaway, delivery and drive-through formats. The company’s about page lists later additions including a breakfast menu, a smaller “Minis” range and an ordering app with loyalty points. English Wikipedia says some restaurants also serve coffee under the name Cafe Hola.

The company presents its kitchen system as its own design. Its about page says the founders built a “bespoke operating platform” and a sticker system for making burritos, nachos and tacos to order at speed, and that chefs from Mexico were hired at the start. Those are company statements rather than independent findings, but they show how GYG describes itself: a fast-food counter with a made-to-order kitchen behind it.

The clearest design detail also comes from the company. GYG says its main colours and a bespoke lettering for the logo were developed at the outset, and that the GYG letters are “made of sticky tape” as a nod to the street art of Mexico. No public specification of those colours or that lettering has been published, so the palette in this guide is our own. The head offices, the company says, are called Hola Central, a name with the same mix of English and Spanish as the restaurant name.

The chain grew quickly after its first decade. In June 2024 ABC News counted 210 restaurants across four countries: 185 in Australia, 16 in Singapore, five in Japan and four in the United States. English Wikipedia gives 237 Australian restaurants at the end of 2025, with 29 more in Singapore and Japan.

How burrito chains present themselves.

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.

From a Newtown shopfront to the ASX.

Marks had said in 2019 that he wanted to list the company, English Wikipedia says, and GYG listed on the Australian Securities Exchange on 20 June 2024, under the code GYG. Ahead of the float, ABC News explained that the listing would turn GYG from a privately held business into one whose shares trade publicly, and quoted analysts who disagreed about its valuation; the company told prospective investors it wanted to keep opening restaurants in Australia and abroad. English Wikipedia says Hilton Brett had been appointed co-chief executive alongside Marks in October 2023.

The United States proved the hardest market. GYG opened its first American restaurant in Naperville, a suburb of Chicago, in January 2020, according to English Wikipedia. On 22 May 2026 ABC News reported that the company would immediately stop trading at its restaurants around Chicago, after deciding the US business was not meeting its financial targets. In its statement the company said Australia remained its main focus, and that it would carry on in Singapore and Japan with its international partners.

That leaves a chain run from Sydney whose name, taped lettering and menu all lean on the founders’ idea of Mexican street food. For a design guide, Guzman y Gomez shows how an invented two-surname name, cut down to three letters, can carry a restaurant brand from one Newtown shopfront to a listed company, with a single hand-made detail in the logo doing much of the work. Compare Zambrero, the Canberra burrito chain founded in the same years, and Chipotle, the American burrito chain. For this guide we use tape black, street yellow and chilli red with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Guzman y Gomez’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.