Founder McArthur Resigns as President, CEO of Green Burrito : Fast food: The Anaheim firm says the executive’s resignation is not related to a stock sale two months ago.

The Green Burrito fast-food chain said Monday that one of its founders, Gary A. McArthur, had resigned as president, CEO and as a director.

The resignation occurred little more than two months after Green Burrito sold 1 million shares of stock and turned over control of the company to a wealthy Oklahoman, Godfather’s Pizza founder William M. Theisen.

The company said the events are not related, and that McArthur left because he wanted to oversee his investments full time.

McArthur, who resigned Saturday, said in an interview that he was “burned out” and that it “wasn’t fair” to the company or his family to remain.

GB Foods Corp. hasn’t been doing very well since going public in 1990: The chain lost $588,000 through the first nine months of 1992 and $496,000 for all of 1991.

Theisen is evidently seen by investors as a savior: After the deal, the stock had jumped as high as $15 a share; it was trading at about $3 in August. Theisen turned Godfather’s Pizza into a 900-store chain in the 1970s before merging it into another company in the early 1980s.

Last fall, as Green Burrito stumbled, it sold Theisen more than 20% of itself for $3 million and gave him complete control over the voting stock of McArthur and the two other founders.

Since then, Theisen hasn’t been running the company, said Executive Vice President Robert V. Gibson, but merely acting as “a consultant.”

Gibson is also a company founder, as is GB Foods Chairman Ruben Rodriguez, who will assume McArthur’s old jobs as president and CEO.

Green Burrito is a small chain by national standards: It had 11 company-owned restaurants and 50 franchises around Southern California near the end of last year.

Last year it combined one of its Mexican restaurants with an Arby’s roast beef restaurant in Long Beach. Sales went up, and Green Burrito says it hopes to grow by combining with more Arby’s and perhaps other fast-food chains.

The company’s stock fell 12.5 cents on the NASDAQ market Monday, to $13.625 a share.

McArthur, 51, of Villa Park, says he still owns about half a million shares, or about 10% of the company’s outstanding stock.