The simple act of Pedro taking home-cooked meals for his Texas and Pacific Railway coworkers blossomed into a chain of restaurants across North Texas. Their business was a success for 57 years, but the couple decided to close up shop in October of 2023.
“We got the news just like everybody else did,” said Marc McBride, Director of Operations at Westland Hospitality. McBride’s business partners, Bourke Harvey and Gigi Howell, leaders of Westland Hospitality, grew up in Fort Worth. They heard the news and knew, “we don’t want that legacy to die,” said McBride, and that action became reality in December of 2023 when they bought the restaurant.
Pulido’s is a restaurant that still captures the heart of the original owners because the Westland Hospitality team has devoted its company to maintaining the authenticity of restaurants and bringing them back to life. “We want to be able to honor that legacy that [the Pulidos] built as much as possible…so with our menu versus their menu, the items, I would say, are about 95% the same,” said McBride.
After purchasing, the group began by reopening some of the previously closed locations and invited previous workers to a job opportunity at Pulido’s again. “We were able to retain a good portion of them, and they were able to guide us through some of the recipe processes,” said McBride. The restaurant is now called Pulido’s Kitchen and Cantina because “we really wanted to grow that [cantina] aspect of the business,” said McBride. However, besides some minor changes to recipes and updates like adding full bars to the locations, “we felt like we did it in a way that would still honor them.”
The Pulido’s legacy is continuing to expand, and according to McBride, the Willow Park location is shooting to be open to the public by the end of January after completing the “final touches” stage of construction. Once open, the team will host an opening ceremony.
“We take the hospitality part very seriously,” said McBride, “we want our guests to feel like they’re at home, and we want them to feel like the servers and bartenders and the cooks and chefs that are taking care of them are part of that family.” Pulido’s began with family, thanks to Pedro and Dionicia, and that will continue into Willow Park.
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