some Portillos news and recent openings. May try to talk more about specific stocks in 2024 and get back to how that was more my thing. So trying to launch some stock threads.
Texas
https://www.chron.com/food/article/chicago-food-houston-portillos-18491102.php
Company/employee culture
2nd version of their drive-thru/pickup-only design (all the rest include dine-in)
Las Vegas - coming soon
Atlanta, Denver, and Vegas - the expansion strategy details
https://www.nrn.com/fast-casual/portillo-s-cfo-michelle-hook-outlines-restaurant-brand-s-real-estate-strategy
Hook said that as Portillo’s opens new markets, it seeks get to scale as quickly as possible.
“We believe minimum scale in a market is at least six restaurants,” she said, noting that the company, after debuting in the Dallas market in early 2023, plans to open its fifth restaurant in the region, a unit in Mansfield, Texas, in the first quarter of 2024. “The goal is within 24 to 36 months of going into a market you get to scale,” she said.
Portillo’s has recently expanded beyond the Midwest to Arizona, Florida, and Texas, and the “vast majority” of its growth over the next couple of years will be in the Sun Belt, she said.
“We’re going to start scouting sites in Atlanta, Denver, and Vegas,” Hook added. “Those are the next three markets that we’ll look to enter.”
As an infill strategy, Portillo’s this past weekend opened its second drive-thru and pick-up only unit with no seating in Rosemont, Ill., after debuting the concept in 2022 in Joliet, Ill.
“We’ll use it today as just an infill strategy in that market, but, as we get scale in other markets, it’s definitely an opportunity that we’re going to continue to look at,” Hook said.
Portillo’s has also been working on reducing the size of the restaurants in other ways, Hook said.
“A traditional Portillo’s is probably anywhere from 10,000 to 11,000 square feet,” Hook explained. “If you go into the kitchen, you’ll see a production line that’s very linear, That’s about a 100 feet of production line.”
What the company has termed “Kitchen 23” is about 7,700 square feet, she said, with about 65 feet of production line. “Obviously, with that shrinkage on the line, you get less conveyance more adjacencies as you’re working,” Hook said, “and so we’ve seen the benefit of the labor efficiencies with this new kitchen as we move into what we’re calling the restaurant of the future. That prototype today is 5,500 to 6,000 square feet and the production line is about 47 feet. So we will start to build those late in ‘24 at the earliest.”
The company has also completed retrofits at 18 of its existing restaurants with the new, more efficient kitchen design, she said, and plans to do the remainder through 2025.
Restaurant Count and some Order statistics:
Portillo’s Inc. is adding 12 restaurants this year, bringing total to 84.
Portillo’s has seen its digital-order mix hold steady at about 22%. About 40% of its sales are through the drive-thru, about 40% is dine-in and 20% is through other channels, she said. About 13% to 14% of the other channels are delivery, which includes third-party platforms and its own delivery of orders $100 or more.
Dreamer <— Long PTLO
