Iconic American Fast-Food Chains That No Longer Exist

4. Chi-Chi’s

Year Founded: 1974
Number of Stores at Peak: 210
Last Store Closed: 2004 

Chi-Chi’s is a chain of Mexican restaurants owned by Hormel. While Chi-Chi’s is still open in Austria, the U.A.E., and Kuwait, it has closed down in America. It went defunct in 2004. The company’s last owner in America was Prandium, and it went out of business, closing down 210 locations, as a result of bankruptcy.

But bankruptcy was not the only reason that Chi-Chi’s was unable to survive. In 2003, just one month after it declared bankruptcy, Chi-Chi’s had the largest Hepatitis A outbreak in the history of the U.S. There were four deaths and 660 infections in total, causing millions in lawsuits from which Chi-Chi’s could not recover.