Having followed the food industry for a long time, we see a strong convenience trend. People have less time, more money, they go out more, and increasingly prefer fast casual food. In Norway, there are no competitors to Burger King, McDonald’s, and no healthier options. The more we looked at some twenty food concepts and met with companies within the fast casual arena, the more we believed in a modular concept allowing people to create a meal from many healthy options.‍

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We got in touch with Los Tacos through Carl Hall, our industrial advisor, who had met the founder, Brian Kovary, through a lawyer friend. Brian is from San Diego. Years ago, Brian went to Bergen in Norway to visit a friend and discovered that Norwegians love Tacos. In Norway, “Taco Friday” is almost religious. Brian thought “if everyone eats Tacos at home every Friday, why aren’t there any Tacos restaurants?”. So he started an American-Mexican pop up in Bergen and took the concept to various festivals.

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In connection with the US election, Los Tacos got lots of attention due to a clever campaign; senators in the US picked up that a Norwegian restaurant chain promised to offer tacos if Trump lost, but since he won, Brian offered consolation tacos!

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Brian is a talented entrepreneur who knows how to present an exciting tacos concept. Soon he realised they needed external capital to expand. We wanted to help him.

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We are currently focusing on operational efficiency and getting the right people on board. Now we have an experienced chairman of the board who spent 30 years with the successful chain Max in Sweden. Our next step is to grow in Norway, as well as define the right brand and market position to shape a high quality fast casual restaurant concept. Based on experience, we also want to make sure we have a large enough management team to simultaneously cope with the core business as well as the market expansion.

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