How El Pollo Loco is winning the value-profitability battle

How is El Pollo Loco giving customers value without giving up profits?

This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Liz Williams, CEO of the fast-food chicken chain. 

El Pollo Loco just reported a decline in same-store sales with an increase in traffic and restaurant-level profits. Generally speaking when customers pay less per order it’s hard to generate profit growth. Williams explains how the company did this.

But we talk about a lot of other things, including the company’s development strategy—it just opened its 500th restaurant—and the difficulty of operating in California, especially these days.

We also talk about the chain’s plan for beverages and why that’s a huge opportunity. And the company is testing a couple of intriguing chicken products. 

This is a great conversation with Liz Williams so please check it out.