Naugles

Naugles was a Southern California fast-food Mexican restaurant chain that existed from 1970 to 1995. A revived Naugles chain was established in 2015 by entrepreneur Christian Ziebarth, after it was ruled that the trademarks had been abandoned by the original company's successor, Del Taco.

Naugles was founded by former Del Taco partner Dick Naugle. The first Naugles restaurant was located at the southwest corner of Fourteenth St. and Brockton Ave. in Riverside, California (now a Del Taco). Dick's motto was "Prepare food fresh. Serve customer fast. Keep place clean!"

Harold Butler purchased Naugles in 1979 when the chain consisted of three restaurants. The chain was expanded by a system of non-exclusive franchises, which later was ruled unlawful by a federal court. Butler built Naugles up to 225 restaurants by 1986, when he sold the chain to Collins Foods International. Naugles merged with Del Taco in 1988 when businessman Aniwar Soliman purchase both companies at nearly the same time. A few of the Naugles menu items, such as those with the "Macho" designation, found their way into the regular Del Taco menu. Also, the Naugles Taco Sandwich (Del Taco called it a "bun taco") can still be ordered from Del Taco even though it does not appear as an item listed on the menu.

Later in May 1989, Soliman announced that he was going to convert most of the 171 Naugles locations to Del Taco by the end of that summer. By the time Soliman sold the integrated company in January 1990 to a four-member group of Del Taco managers led by President Wayne W. Armstrong, there were 59 Naugles left with 25 located in California and 34 located in Utah, Nevada, Missouri and Arizona with 290 Del Tacos in California plus a lone Del Taco in Arizona. In August 1992, only 31 Naugles in the states of Utah, Nevada, Missouri, and Illinois remained with all the locations in California had been converted.

In March 1994, Del Taco converted all seven remaining Naugles locations in the state of Nevada to the Del Taco brand. Del Taco claimed that the conversions led to a great increase in sales at those locations. Seven month later, Del Taco announced it had completed converting all six remaining Naugles locations in the state of Utah in October 1994. In December 1994, Del Taco announced that they have finished converting all four Naugles in the metropolitan St. Louis area. According to the 1994 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the four Naugles locations in St. Louis were the last sites that were converted to Del Taco.