Eyeing an ambitious target of at least 50 openings next year, the quick-service Taco Del Mar chain is seeking to attract area developers from other chains, particularly Subway.

James Schmidt, co-founder of Taco Del Mar, said he considers Subway's franchisee roster his prime hunting grounds for developers for the chain's expansion territories.

According to Schmidt, some Subway franchisees are becoming frustrated as they try to expand within what is already the nation's largest fast-food chain. He's hoping 11-year-old Taco Del Mar - which kicked off a national expansion drive this year and launched a co-branding test outlet with the Skipper's Seafood & Chowder chain - might offer more room to grow.

The company already has signed up five master developers, covering Oregon, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and parts of Washington. Two are former Subway franchisees, while others have past experience with Dairy Queen, Circle K and 7-Eleven.

Schmidt said he considers Subway franchisees to be among the best fast-food operators, making them highly desirable developers for Taco Del Mar. The two concepts have a lot of operating similarities, he added, including their stores' similar sizes and comparable assembly-line style for order preparation.

"It's the same idea," he said. " You take the bread out, add the tortilla and away we go."

The chain, whose nearly 70 units from Alaska to Idaho include two in British Columbia, recently created a new prototype that franchisees will use. It offers more of a casual-restaurant feel than in Taco Del Mar's previous fast-food incarnation. Bright, tropical colors are used, and a small, thatched shack ringed with bar stools offers an alternative to table seating.

After eight years with Subway, Todd Hicks sold his four Subway stores in western Washington to become Taco Del Mar's area developer for a Northwester territory that includes Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Spokane, Wash.

Similarly, Bill Wright sold his co-ownership in 20 Subway stores in eastern Washington to become Taco Del Mar's developer for Utah and southeastern Washington's Tri-Cities area.

Wright said he was looking to strike out on his own, and his research into quick-service options pointed him at the growing fast-casual Mexican segment. Taco Del Mar was attractive in part because of low entry cost. A store can be opened for between $77,000 and $160,000, Wright said.

"I really liked some of their features," he said. "There's the opportunity for the customer to see the food actually being prepared as he moves down the line and the ability for the customer to customize the meal by selecting the items." While those attributes have helped propel fast-casual segment leader Chipotle to success, they also are "a couple of things that have caused Subway to be successful," Wright added.

He also likes Taco Del Mar's brand image as a purveyor of healthful quick-service Mexican food. The company's motto is "Find Your Inner Baja," and the menu features lower fat, baked Rippin' Fish Tacos as well as the chain's jumbo signature item, the Mondo Burrito.

Wright's first store opened in July in Richland, Wash., and a second is scheduled to open this month in Kennewick, Wash. The stores he owns would serve as training stores for franchisees that Wright intends to recruit.

"Our first target is to open 25 stores in a three- to four- year time frame," he explained.

For Todd Hicks, Taco Del Mar represents more of a ground-floor opportunity than Subway does. His opportunity to benefit from recruiting franchisees and providing support services, rather than simply being a franchisee himself, is appealing, he said.

"Taco Del Mar is where Subway was 25 years ago," he said. "Coming from a successful franchise, I'm not going to give that up unless I believe the next one's going to be more successful. I was very well established with Subway, but the opportunity to come into a system at a ground level, yet it's already established as a solid entity - those opportunities are once in a lifetime."

Hicks said he has seven confirmed store openings slated through next May, and he plans to open seven more be the end of 2004. Three of his territorial stores - in the Montana cities of Bozeman and Great Falls, and in Moscow, Idaho - already are open, and outlets in Spokane and other markets are under construction.

Hicks chose his territory because he wanted to move back to his home state of Idaho, and interest from potential franchisee has been high in his area, he said.

"People who have seen the concept and been in a store are already sold on the concept," he said. "It has an automatic appeal to a businessperson because of the style, the atmosphere, the friendliness of the staff, which is rare in fast food," he said. "And then you get to the quality of the food."

While most of Taco Del Mar's current expansion plans revolve around a master-developer network, it is also experimenting with co-branding as a way to grow. The company opened a co-branded outlet in Eugene, Ore., this summer with the 74-unit regional quick service chain Skippers Seafood & Chowder of Edmonds, Wash. That test unit offers a complete line of menu items from both chains.

Thirty-seven year old Skippers' "customer is quite a bit older than our customer, and they have some sites with drive-thrus, so they are looking for something to boost their sales with younger customers, and we're looking to boost our presence in small towns," Schmidt said of the co-branding effort. So far, the results have been encouraging, he added.

"If an individual Taco Del Mar might do $300,000 [a year], and a Skippers might do $400,000 or $500,000, when you put them together you can afford to build a drive-thru, and the return to the investor starts working," Schmidt said.

Taco Del Mar's recent expansion strategies contrasts with a failed earlier expansion push the company made in 1997. The chain tried adding company owned stores in Boston - its first units outside the Northwest - but found that too logistically difficult to manage from Seattle. The chain retreated to the Northwest in 1999.

Debt from that misstep forced Taco Del Mar into retreat for several years. Underperforming stores were closed as the company retrenched until it was bale to expand again beginning in 2001.

Taco Del Mar stores are projected to ring up sales of $24 million this year systemwide, up from 16 million in 2002.