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One Family Owns 58 of Houston's 75 Burger Kings

Mert Iseri

Houston has 75 Burger Kings inside the city limits. We pulled the sales tax permit behind every one.

58 belong to Houston Foods, Inc. State franchise tax records name its president: Shoukat Dhanani of the Dhanani Group in Sugar Land, Texas. Add Feroz Panjwani's Texas Restaurant Holdings, LLC at 15 and two people control 73 of the 75.

The map

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Owner entityLocationsPrincipals (per public records)
Houston Foods, Inc.58Shoukat Dhanani
Texas Restaurant Holdings, LLC15Feroz Panjwani
VIRVAS, Inc.1Nitin Patel, Vallabh D. Patel, Rajendra N. Patel
HPO Restaurants Holding LLC1Henry Ohen

Eight years of transfers

The state's permit history retains operator transfers from 2018 onward:

  • October 2018: Texas Restaurant Holdings, formed that June, permitted 18 Houston stores in a single batch. Whoever ran those stores before is outside the dataset's retention window.
  • November 2025: the Dhananis folded their own Shonaz Foods, Inc., six stores, into Houston Foods. Intra-family reshuffling, not an acquisition.
  • February 2026: Houston Foods took over the Texas Restaurant Holdings store at 4755 Highway 6 N. The number one operator absorbing a store from number two.
  • Two closures are visible: the Texas Restaurant Holdings store at 7406 Fondren Rd, closed per Google with its permit still active, and the Houston Foods store at 2999 S Richey St, superseded by a 2019 unit across the street.

The relics go deeper. The dataset still carries a 2006-era Burger King on Richmond Avenue owned by Sugarland Restaurants, LP and a 1993-era store on Bay Area Blvd owned by Gita International, Inc.

One family, two cities

Houston Foods is the Dhanani Group's legacy company. The group has operated the Houston market since 1994. The same family owns 38 of Chicago's 46 Burger Kings through Tri City Foods of Illinois LLC. One Sugar Land family controls the Burger King map in two of America's four largest cities.

Sources

  • Ora Google Places sweep: 60 Burger King listings in Houston, the API's hard cap. Every licensed location the sweep missed was verified with a targeted query.
  • Texas Comptroller's Active Sales Tax Permit Holders dataset: 86 active Burger King permit rows across 4 legal entities, each with its taxpayer number.
  • Texas Comptroller franchise tax records: named officers and titles for each permit-holding entity.
  • The companion All Permitted Sales Tax Locations dataset: operator transfers back to 2018, plus a few relic closed rows.

Limitations: city limits only, per the Comptroller's in-city tax flag. Officer records name a company's top officers, not its shareholders.

Download the dataset: 75 rows with address, owner entity, named principals, and permit dates.

Ora tracks the license filings, transfers, and closures that change this table. Contact us to learn more.