The Habit Burger Grill

The Habit Burger Grill is an American fast casual restaurant chain that specializes in charbroiled hamburgers. The company also sells other typical fast-casual fare. +more Its headquarters are in Irvine, California.

In March 2020, Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Wingstreet, acquired The Habit Burger Grill.

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History

The Habit Burger Grill was founded on November 15, 1969, in Santa Barbara County, California as a family-owned business.

In 1980, Brent and Bruce Reichard purchased the original location in Goleta. A second location opened in Ventura in 1996 and they gradually grew the chain to twenty-four units in Southern California.

In 2007, KarpReilly, a private equity firm, acquired a majority ownership in the company and began to rapidly expand the chain, including franchising. Not included in the sale were the eight locations in Santa Barbara County, California, which remained under the ownership of the Reichard brothers.

In 2014, Habit had 109 locations either open for business or under construction, including an expansion into Seattle. At that time, the company was one of the fastest-growing fast food chains in the United States, with a 40% sales increase from 2012 to 2013. +more In November 2014, the company raised $83. 7 million in an initial public offering. The share price immediately doubled. By 2016, growth had slowed significantly, in line with the burger business.

In 2017, the company announced plans to expand into the United Kingdom with 30 restaurants.

In March 2020, Yum! Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell and KFC, acquired Habit. The brothers decided to retire and sell their remaining restaurants to Yum! Brands in 2020. +more The operations shifted in March 2022.

Locations

As of September 2021, Habit Burger Grill currently has over 300 locations, mostly in California, as follows:

Location	# of locations
Arizona	21
California	223
Florida	15
Idaho	5
Maryland	5
Massachusetts	1
Nevada	15
New Jersey	12
North Carolina	2
Pennsylvania	1
South Carolina	1
Utah	18
Virginia	3
Washington State	10
Cambodia	3
China	8

The company also has a fleet of nine food trucks.

Important

Santa Barbara Independent

Taco Bell

HuffPost

Santa Barbara County, California

United States

Reception

In mid-2014, The Habit's "Charburger" was named the best burger in America by Consumer Reports, a nonprofit organization dedicated to unbiased product testing, scoring an 8.1 out of 10 among 53,745 participants.