Ghai Restaurant Group buys 44 Taco Bell locations, expands footprint

Ghai Restaurant Group bought 44 Taco Bell locations from Mas Restaurant Group, pushing its Taco Bell count to about 81 restaurants and more than doubling its footprint in the brand. For the crews and managers inside those stores, the bigger change is not the logo on the paycheck but who sets staffing levels, training expectations, maintenance priorities, and the path to promotion.

Mas Restaurant Group was described as a franchisee of 123 Taco Bell restaurants in the Houston and Columbus metro areas when it announced the sale of its 44 Houston locations to Ghai. Sidley Austin LLP dated its deal note June 4, 2026, and terms were not disclosed. Bessemer Investors, which had backed Mas since 2018, identified Mas as a 115-plus-unit Taco Bell operator in Houston and Columbus in its portfolio materials, underscoring how quickly a large franchise group can shift from expansion to divestiture when ownership strategy changes.

That matters inside the restaurants because Taco Bell’s labor model leaves a lot of day-to-day control with franchise operators. Taco Bell says it is a franchising brand, and reporting has put about 94% of its domestic locations in franchise hands. The parent company still controls the menu, brand standards, and marketing, but the local owner typically controls hiring pace, scheduling patterns, labor targets, and how closely stores are managed. For shift leaders and restaurant managers, a new owner can mean different expectations for labor deployment, food safety follow-through, and how quickly internal candidates move up.

Ghai’s purchase also adds to a broader reshuffling inside the Taco Bell system. Industry reporting said the acquisition left Ghai with roughly 200 restaurants across brands, with one report putting its total at about 260 units. Mas, meanwhile, continued trimming its portfolio after the Houston sale. On June 25, 2026, it announced it had sold its 43 Ohio locations to Southpaw, leaving Mas with 36 Taco Bells in the Houston market after the Texas transaction.

The deal comes against a backdrop of scale at Taco Bell itself. Yum! Brands ended 2025 with 9,030 Taco Bell restaurants worldwide and $18.361 billion in global system sales, making the brand one of the company’s biggest engines. Taco Bell also launched Business School in 2022 with the University of Louisville to broaden and diversify franchise ownership, a sign that the company sees ownership structure as a strategic issue, not just a balance-sheet move. In practice, the 44-store sale shows how quickly control over labor conditions can move when a large franchise portfolio changes hands.