If you drove past 2115 North Prince Street this week hoping for chips, salsa, and a crispy relleno plate, you found the lights off. Leal's Mexican Food Restaurant, the place that has carried Clovis's "Best of Clovis" title for more than two decades, closed that location at 3 p.m. on July 26. Right now, for the first time in years, Leal's does not have a single open door in Clovis.
That sounds like bad news. It isn't. It's a homecoming, and the reason the family chose the harder path tells you something real about how a restaurant survives 69 years in two states.
Two Addresses, One Family, Sixty-Nine Years
Leal's traces back to 1957, when newlyweds Jesse and Irma Leal opened a small tortilla factory and café in Muleshoe, Texas. Irma had learned the recipes from her own father's tortilla shop in Mercedes, Texas, during the Great Depression, and those same recipes still run the kitchen today.
Their daughter Laura brought the family business to Clovis in 1988, opening the original Leal's on Mabry Drive. She expanded to a second Clovis location on North Prince Street in 2004 and ran both until COVID forced her to consolidate everything into the Prince Street building around 2020. Not long after, a water main break shut the Mabry Drive building down entirely, and it sat closed for years while Prince Street carried the Clovis business alone.
On July 21, Laura sold the Clovis operation to her brother, Victor. He's not new to the family trade. Victor bought the original Muleshoe restaurant from their parents back in 1992 and has run it ever since. Now, at 64, he's taking on Clovis too, with his wife Debbie joining the new venture. Laura, 62, told the Eastern New Mexico News her focus was making sure the staff was protected: "My biggest thing was to make sure we take care of our employees." She added a line that explains the whole decision in five words: "Victor needed to buy it because it needs to stay in the family."
Here's the timeline, in order:
- 1957 – Jesse and Irma Leal open the first Leal's in Muleshoe, Texas.
- 1988 – Laura Leal opens the original Clovis location on Mabry Drive.
- 1992 – Victor Leal buys the Muleshoe restaurant from his parents.
- 2004 – Laura expands to a second Clovis location on North Prince Street.
- Around 2020 – COVID forces Laura to consolidate both Clovis locations into the Prince Street building.
- Shortly after – A water main break closes the Mabry Drive building, which sits vacant for years.
- July 21, 2026 – Laura sells the Clovis operation to Victor.
- July 26, 2026 – The Prince Street location closes at 3 p.m.
- Expected around late August 2026 – Mabry Drive reopens, roughly a month after the sale.
Why Victor Bought Instead Of Laura Just Staying Put
This is the part that's easy to miss if you only skim the headline. Laura didn't have to sell anything. Prince Street was open, staffed, and running fine. The simplest move would have been to keep operating there and let Mabry Drive stay closed, the way it had been for years.
Instead, the family shut down a working restaurant to reopen in a building that had been sitting damaged and empty. Victor explained the logic plainly: "We decided on Mabry because of the extensive remodel there." Mabry Drive is where Laura started the Clovis business in 1988, sixteen years before Prince Street ever existed. Choosing to move back there, at real cost and real disruption, says the family sees more long-term value in the original address than in the newer one.
There's a second layer here that's easy to miss too. Victor already owns the Muleshoe restaurant, which sits alongside the family's tortilla factory and supplies the fresh chips that show up at every Leal's table. Now the same branch of the family runs both the Muleshoe original and the reborn Mabry Drive location, tightening a supply line that already crosses the Texas-New Mexico line. For a restaurant chain built on one family recipe passed down since the 1920s, that's not a footnote. It's the whole point.
What Actually Changes, And What Doesn't
Changing:
- The address, from 2115 N. Prince St. to 3100 E. Mabry Dr.
- Ownership, from Laura Leal to her brother Victor and his wife Debbie.
- The Prince Street building itself, which Laura says will go up for sale soon.
- About four decades of restaurant equipment tied to the Prince Street building, which is being sold off rather than moved.
Staying the same:
- The menu. Victor has been explicit that the recipes don't change.
- All 70 employees keep their jobs.
- It's still a Leal running the counter, which the family says was the entire condition of the sale.
- The tortilla and chip supply chain out of Muleshoe, which now sits under one owner alongside the Clovis restaurant.
If You're Craving Leal's This Week
Right now, if you're timing a lunch run for the crispy relleno or a family pack for a Sunday dinner, there's genuinely nowhere in Clovis to get it. Prince Street is closed for good. Mabry Drive is still finishing what the family calls an extensive remodel, following the water main break that kept it shuttered for years. Based on Victor's own estimate at the time of the sale, a reopening around the third week of August is the best working target, though renovations on an older building rarely move on a fixed clock.
Laura has said she plans to spend some of her time after the sale on restaurant consulting, and possibly music, once she's helped her brother through the transition. If you want to check hours or catch reopening updates before making the drive, Leal's own site is the place to watch.
There's a quieter local real estate footnote in all of this too. Once the Prince Street building sells, whatever moves in next inherits one of the more recognized restaurant addresses on that stretch of Prince Street, a corner that's carried the Leal's name and its 20-plus years of local awards since 2004. That's the kind of quiet turnover worth watching if you keep an eye on how Clovis's commercial strips change hands over time, the same way we do on our everyday life in Clovis coverage.
Why This Matters Beyond The Menu
Businesses that last 69 years in two states don't usually get there by expanding fast and holding on loosely. They get there by knowing which building actually carries the brand and being willing to close a working restaurant to go get it back. Leal's just did that in front of the whole town. The gap you're feeling right now, the dark storefront on Prince Street and the quiet one on Mabry, is the visible cost of a family choosing its original address over its newer one. That's worth remembering the next time you're back in a booth on Mabry Drive with a basket of fresh chips in front of you.
We track these kinds of local shifts because they're part of what makes Clovis feel like Clovis, not because every closed sign is a listing waiting to happen. If you're curious about what else is changing on the commercial strips around town, or you're ready to talk through a property of your own, the team at Sagebrush Real Estate is happy to help. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready.
