Jose Lopez and his family spent some time recently taking photos of one another at the sign of the restaurant where they had lunch, Pollo Campero. Lopez came up to Minnesota from Iowa to visit his sister, and the chain’s location in suburban St. Paul was a must-visit. The company doesn’t have a location near his home.
“It reminds us of Guatemala,” Lopez said.
This is the kind of loyalty that has given Pollo Campero confidence enough to keep pushing to make its brand of chicken work in the U.S. And now, after two decades of effort, the brand believes it has the right foundation to speed its growth.
Pollo Campero’s parent company, CMI Foods, is investing $190 million to build more of its restaurants in the U.S.
The company expects to double its unit count over the next three years, from its current 85 locations. Pollo Campero plans to build 60 of those restaurants itself, with franchisees building the rest.
“We want to show our operators that we really trust the brand,” Luis Javier Rodas, the brand’s U.S. general manager and chief operating officer, said in an interview. “We’re going to put our money where our mouth is.”
That growth will include some high-visibility locations, such as a restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, a pair in Manhattan, one of which is in front of Macy’s, along with a store close to Michigan Avenue in Chicago. In the next three years, most of the growth will be in California, Florida, New York and Washington D.C. Franchisees are expected to open a new market, Arizona.
Pollo Campero and its franchisees already have 70 signed leases, a point Rodas emphasized. After all, many brands talk about wanting to add that many locations but don’t always follow through.
“We already have those leases,” Rodas said. “We already have accountability and responsibility. I can name some fantastic premium sites.”
“Every state operates like a different country. Every state has different habits, different laws, different regulations. This is one country. But we needed to hire expertise for different parts of the country.” - Luis Javier Rodas.
For Pollo Campero, the investment and planned growth follows two decades in which the brand looked for the right combination to make its concept work in the U.S., with limited success.
The brand was founded in Guatemala as a family chicken restaurant in 1971. It built a huge following there and in El Salvador. The following was so large that immigrants to the U.S. would return from visits to Guatemala loaded with boxes of the chain’s chicken.
The brand hoped to capture that enthusiasm when it first opened in the U.S., in Los Angeles, in 2002. “The plan was to only grow with franchises,” Rodas said. “We were expecting franchisees to just grow the brand while we were managing Campero.”
That didn’t quite work as well as hoped, and six years later the company started building corporate restaurants to spur growth. Even that didn’t quite work. “When we came here, it was a big learning experience,” Rodas said.
The U.S. fast-food market is the most difficult in the world, and there are numerous chains that specialize in chicken, bone-in or boneless. The brand needed to learn how to be the underdog, rather than the market’s dominant player. It also needed to find suppliers and learn U.S. consumers’ different habits. It also takes a lot longer to get things done. Permitting, construction and licensing take 18 to 24 months here, compared with three to six months in Guatemala.
Campero also had to learn some of the peculiarities of the U.S. market. “Every state operates like a different country,” Rodas said. “Every state has different habits, different laws, different regulations. This is one country. But we needed to hire expertise for different parts of the country.”
Pollo Campero spent another five years tweaking the menu and the business to ensure it had the right model to grow. It launched a spicy chicken sandwich and empanadas, along with Camperitos, its version of chicken nuggets. The brand also carries more unique items like Yuca Fries and Sweet Plantains as well as the Mexican beverage Horchata, made with rice, milk, vanilla and cinnamon.
“It’s not only for fried chicken and French fries anymore,” Rodas said. “People are looking for different options.”
Pollo Campero's fried chicken with a side of sweet plantains and a roll. / Photo by Jonathan Maze.
The fixes also included beefing up Pollo Campero’s U.S. headquarters in Dallas with an experienced group of executives.
By 2017, the brand felt it had the foundation to grow and by 2018 started to sign leases. The pandemic put a temporary halt to the effort.
But 2020 turned out to be a record year for the brand and 2021 was even better. System sales in the U.S. rose 26% last year, according to Restaurant Business sister company Technomic. Sales are up 32% since 2018, though Pollo Campero closed three underperforming units. The company’s unit volumes topped $2.4 million last year.
This year, apparently, is better still. “2022 is going to be our best year ever, from every standpoint, revenues, profits,” Rodas said.
“We needed to clean the house,” he added. “That takes time. And we had to hire the right team. We had to define what the menu and what the business model was, for every state. Now we’re ready.”
As Jose Lopez demonstrated, Pollo Campero has a core of loyal customers in immigrants for whom the brand reminds them of their native country. “We still have a great opportunity to follow legacy consumers,” Rodas said.
But the brand also believes it can target others with its brand of fried chicken. “When someone tries our fried chicken for the first time, I’ve never in my career heard someone say, ‘Thank you, but I didn’t like this,’” Rodas said. “I’ve been here 22 years. I’m not saying that because I’m the managing director. The fried chicken has something special.”
“We want to be a big brand in this country,” he added.
That would be good news for someone like Jose Lopez, who wouldn’t have to travel as far to get that reminder of Guatemala.