Cafe Rio names Mike Burns CEO in bid to speed service and clean up stores

Cafe Rio turned to Mike Burns with a blunt mandate: restore sales growth, speed up service, improve the food and make restaurants cleaner. For the Salt Lake City-based fast-casual Mexican chain, that is not just an executive shuffle. It is the kind of turnaround order that usually shows up first in the kitchen, on the expo line and in the closing routine.

The chain announced Burns as CEO on June 2, 2026. Cafe Rio was founded in 1997 and has grown to more than 150 locations, with outside location directories placing it around 160 to 162 U.S. restaurants in 2023 and 2024. That size gives Burns a wide operating footprint, but it also means any push for faster service or tighter standards will land across a lot of hourly teams at once.

Burns arrives with a long restaurant resume. He previously led &pizza and later Latitude Food Group, and he has also held executive roles at RAVE Restaurant Group, Pei Wei Asian Kitchen and Bojangles. He had been CEO of &pizza since 2023, and one report said he was named to that role in March 2024, replacing co-founder Michael Lastoria. His move to Cafe Rio set off a search for a new chief executive at &pizza and Tijuana Flats, a sign that one leadership change can ripple through multiple brands.

For workers, the new mandate has clear floor-level meaning. Faster service usually requires tighter line discipline, stronger training and more precise station management. Better food can mean more standardized prep and less room for improvisation in the back of house. Cleaner restaurants often mean stricter opening and closing checklists, with more accountability for both front-of-house and kitchen staff. Those changes can help a brand that has lost its rhythm, but they can also turn into more pressure if staffing stays thin.

Ownership matters too. Cafe Rio is owned by Freeman Spogli & Co., which means the turnaround will be measured not just by guest satisfaction but by numbers that private equity watches closely. Third-party company data puts Cafe Rio’s annual revenue at about $448.6 million and its workforce at around 1,800, while Restaurant Business Online ranked its 2023 U.S. sales at $370 million. Burns is also stepping in as Cafe Rio heads toward its 30th anniversary in 2027.

The first signs of whether this is a real operational reset will not come from a glossy campaign. Workers will see it in the schedule, in training hours, in whether menu execution gets simpler, and in whether managers are given enough labor to meet the new standards without burning out the crew that has to deliver them.