LEBANON — Since filing for bankruptcy last year, the owners of Gusanoz Mexican Restaurant have managed to keep their Miracle Mile location open while navigating a volatile economy and fluctuating ingredient costs.
Amid growing financial troubles, the restaurant’s LLC, MYA POS Services filed for bankruptcy in January, 2025, after owners Nick Yager and Maria Limon struggled to finance two related eateries that have since closed.
Two months later, the United States Bankruptcy Court in Concord approved a plan of reorganization to pay back creditors.
As it stands, the reorganization plan gives MYA POS Services, LLC three years to make repayments to creditors, with payments beginning later this year.
“It’s a tough time to be coming out of a bankruptcy,” Yager said in an interview last week. “We’re just trying to weather these fluctuating markets,” noting that cost of ingredients have been particularly unpredictable.
Tomatoes, for example, have fluctuated between $1 and $3 per pound, which is significant for a business that orders “$400 to $500 of fresh tomatoes a week,” Yager said.
Despite the stress of the bankruptcy and the challenging road ahead, Yager has tried to be stoic.
“I think in the restaurant business, or business in general, you have to be able to roll with the punches or you’re not going to survive,” he said.
Eddie Moran, Yager and Limon’s son, has also made a fresh start since his Lebanon restaurant Lalo’s Taqueria shuttered in January, 2025, as the family’s financial struggles mounted.
After Lalo’s closed, he got a job as a server at Red Can, the upscale restaurant in White River Junction, and hosted Lalo’s taco pop-ups around the Upper Valley.
These days, he still holds the occasional pop-up, but he’s “hitting 40, so (he) kind of wanted to slow down,” he said.
A couple weeks ago he got a full-time job as manager of Planet Fitness in West Lebanon. He also picks up shifts as a caterer for the Hanover Inn.
Now that Moran’s had time away from Lalo’s, “I definitely miss it more,” he said.
Yager and Limon’s money troubles stemmed from financing Lalo’s, which Moran opened in 2020, and a Gusanoz location in Enfield that opened through NIMA Holdings, LLC.
The owners originally opened the restaurant 18 Hands out of the Route 4A property, after they were approached by Mickey and Darcy Dowd, who previously ran Mickey’s Roadside Cafe in the same location.
18 Hands became 20 Hands in 2023, and later a Gusanoz.
Yager couldn’t help but see the potential in the Enfield venture.
“In my blood, I’m an entrepreneur,” he said. “Entrepreneurs tend to be professionally hopeful.”
But despite his hopes, the location struggled to be profitable.
“For three and a half years we worked to make Enfield a viable business … but we were never able to,” Yager told the Valley News last year.
Yager still isn’t sure what’s made the Lebanon Gusanoz, which opened in 2005, successful, while the Enfield location floundered.
Perhaps it’s the “right mix of luck, location and hard work,” he said. “We never had significant debt on (the Lebanon location),” he added.
When it came to Lalo’s, labor costs and rising food costs contributed to the taqueria’s financial precarity.
Moran would have had to raise — or even double — Lalo’s prices to keep the restaurant going, he told the Valley News last year.
As the two businesses struggled to turn a profit, Yager and Limon turned to high-interest loans to finance them.
“Everything ballooned in the last six to eight months” that the restaurants were open, Yager said.
The owners shuttered the Enfield Gusanoz in December, 2024, and Lalo’s closed not long after.
When the MYA POS Services LLC filed for bankruptcy in January, 2025, it had estimated assets between $0 and $50,000 and estimated liabilities of over $1 million, according to a voluntary petition submitted to the court.
Of the 38 creditors listed in the voluntary petition, many were out-of-state banks and loan companies.
As the owners move forward, Yager is trying to “stay positive,” he said in a phone interview last week.
“(Our) main goal is to focus on what we know works and continue to be one of the employers of choice in the city of Lebanon,” he said.
Moran’s not writing off the possibility of opening another restaurant, but like Yager, he’s well aware of the costs involved with owning one.
“It’s so expensive to run a restaurant, and you want to pay people a decent wage,” he said.
In some ways, he’s been able to recreate Lalo’s community at Planet Fitness since many of the taqueria’s former customers use the gym.
One of his ideals as an owner was supporting his employees in their sobriety. Moran himself has been sober for about five years.
At Planet Fitness, he’s met others who are invested in maintaining their sobriety.
He’s not surprised he’s been able to bring some of Lalo’s spirit to his new job. People often tell him that “Lalo’s is me,” he said.
CORRECTION: Mickey Dowd owned Mickey’s Roadside Cafe with his wife Darcy Dowd. A previous version of this story included an incorrect spelling of Darcy Dowd’s first name.
