Garibaldi in the Family
by January 5, 2004 12:00 am 86 views
On Dec. 6, Samuel and Elena Reyes closed the Elenita’s Mexican Restaurant in Springdale’s Signature Square shopping center at 1301 E. Robinson Ave.
Immediately afterward, Arturo Reyes, Samuel’s brother, reopened it as Garibaldi Mexican Restaurant. Arturo is partners with Samuel and Elena in the new venture.
Arturo said Garibaldi will be “a little bit different” from the family’s other restaurants. For one thing, he has a mariachi band playing there on Friday nights and may expand the mariachi music throughout the weekend.
“We want people to feel like they’re in Mexico,” Arturo said of the new restaurant.
The Reyes family has 14 Mexican restaurants in Northwest Arkansas. In 1994, Samuel and Arturo’s brother, Clemente Reyes, moved to the area from Guanajuato, a state in central Mexico, and opened a Las Palmas restaurant in Springdale.
Other family members followed Clemente to Northwest Arkansas. Now, Clemente has three Las Palmas restaurants — in Springdale, Tontitown and Rogers.
Samuel and Elena own two Elenita’s restaurants, both of which are in Fayetteville. And Arturo owns eight Acambaro restaurants — two in Bentonville and one each in Fayetteville, Springdale, Lowell, Rogers, and the Missouri cities of Springfield and Monet.
According to Fayetteville tax records, the Acambaro in that city brought in $361,549 in sales in 2002, and the Fayetteville Elenita’s restaurant grossed $361,600.