Tijuana Flats announced on April 19, 2024 that they’d filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and would be closing 11 of their restaurants – one in Virginia Beach and ten in Florida. That leaves the chain with fewer than 100 restaurants, with that Virginia Beach location apparently being their only remaining restaurant in Virginia as it was.
There were sometimes deals available on Tijuana Flats gift cards, usually involving bonus cards (e.g. buy a $25 gift card & get a $5 bonus card free). Other people will have bought their gift cards at full price or been given them as gifts, so the question many will now have is “What happens to Tijuana Flats gift cards?”
As things stand, their gift cards are still valid and being accepted when ordering food from their restaurants; the bankruptcy proceedings don’t affect that. If you do have Tijuana Flats gift cards though, that doesn’t mean everything’s A-OK. For starters, if you’re someone living in the Virginia Beach area, you now have no restaurants nearby to redeem the gift cards at because their closest locations are in Raleigh, NC – more than three hours away. That’s a long way to drive for a burrito.
Even if you still have a Tijuana Flats restaurant near you, there’s no guarantee that it’ll remain open for a long time. The company has now closed 40 of their restaurants in 2024 which represents almost a third of their locations. If you have any Tijuana Flats gift cards to redeem, there’s therefore a risk that either your local restaurant could abruptly close, or the entire chain could end up going into liquidation in the future. That hopefully won’t happen – one of the reasons companies file for bankruptcy protection is to try to put themselves on a firmer financial footing. Just because something hopefully won’t happen doesn’t mean it won’t happen though, so it’d be prudent to redeem your gift cards ASAP just in case Tijuana Flatlines.
h/t Vlad
I thought this was like an Airbnb competitor but locally in Tijuana…
No, it actually got its start as a promoter of Tijuana-style “donkey shows” on the Trail in Orlando, but pivoted to even saltier burritos.