Source: Long Island Business News
Long Island fans of QDOBA Mexican Eats will soon have more locations to chow down on bowls and burritos, as the chain’s area franchisees embark on a major expansion.
Port Washington-based Burger Brothers Restaurant Group, which owns the exclusive development rights for QDOBA in Nassau and Suffolk counties, is planning to open five additional QDOBA restaurants on Long Island, and another in Brooklyn, within the next year.
Burger Brothers, headed by prolific franchisees John and Jeff Froccaro and their longtime business partner Harry Braunstein, opened their first Long Island QDOBA location on Hempstead Turnpike in East Meadow in Feb. 2018, which marked a Long Island return of sorts for the chain that briefly had a location in the Broadway Mall in Hicksville about a decade earlier.
Since then, the franchisees have opened five more Long Island QDOBAs in Plainview, Massapequa, Farmingdale, Bay Shore and Hauppauge.
The next new QDOBA location will be a 2,600-square-foot restaurant at 1826 Deer Park Ave. in Deer Park, which will be the first QDOBA with a drive-thru window and is expected to open before the end of the year.
The Froccaros are soon to begin construction on a 3,100-square-foot QDOBA restaurant at 3962 Hempstead Turnpike in Bethpage, the site of a former Boston Market. The new Bethpage location is expected to open in the first quarter of 2026.
Another soon-to-be constructed QDOBA at 141 Alexander Ave. in Lake Grove, is also expected to open in Q1 2026, taking the place of a shuttered iHop restaurant, which closed in 2022.
In Lindenhurst, a new 2,500-square-foot QDOBA restaurant is expected to open in the second quarter of next year. The new eatery at 136 Sunrise Highway, which will also have a drive-thru window, takes the place of a former Checkers.
A former Friendly’s restaurant at 949 Old Country Road in Riverhead, will become another new QDOBA with a drive-thru window. It will share a 5,000-square-foot building with another soon-to-be announced restaurant.
In August, the Froccaro’s will be opening a new 3,400-square-foot Qdoba restaurant at 57 Court St. in Brooklyn.
Besides QDOBA, the Burger Brothers franchise group owns and operates 31 Burger King restaurants located throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Last month, the franchisees opened Long Island’s first Dave’s Hot Chicken restaurant in Carle Place and will eventually have a total of 14 Dave’s Hot Chicken locations—seven on Long Island and seven in Queens.
The QDOBA chain began in 1995 with a single restaurant in Denver called Zuma Fresh Mexican Grill. As the chain grew, the name was changed to Qdoba about four years later. Jack in the Box, which paid $45 million for the chain in 2003, sold QDOBA to a consortium of funds headed by Apollo Global Management in Dec. 2017 for $305 million. QDOBA now has more than 700 locations.
