Good Food, Good Profits and Good Beer
Chicago Pizza & Brewery Inc. operates 28 locations, 19 under the BJ’s Pizza, Grill & Brewery banner, serving a broad menu including signature Chicago-Style deep-dish pizza, ribs, steak, salads, soups, stuffed potatoes, pasta, grill items, burgers, desserts and handcrafted beers brewed on the premises.
Featured on the dessert menu is the Pizookie, a cookie topped with vanilla ice cream, made notable by the company’s donation of 25 cents from each Pizookie sale to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
Double Digit Increases
The BJ’s concept seems to be doing well in the Southern California market, where six of the companies’ eight restaurants set single month records during July and August of this year. The flagship restaurant in Brea topped the $400,000 sales mark in August for the second time since it opened in April, 1996. Comparable store sales averaged 11.9 percent increases for July and August, 1998, relative to the comparable period in 1997.
Prize Winning Beer
Food and profits are not all that’s good. So is the beer. At the 1998 World Beer Cup, held in Rio de Janeiro in August, the company won a silver medal for its German-style "Weizenator" in the Weizenbock category. And at the 1998 California State Fair, the company’s "Piranha Pale Ale" won first place and its "BJ’s Blond" won third. Those two beers also won silver medals at the 1998 Colorado State Fair, where the company also won a bronze for its "Back Draft IPA."in a "restaurant row" section of town. Additional 1998 openings will take place with the opening of the largest BJ’s a 17,000-square-foot restaurant in Woodland Hills, California. Both of those sites are conversions, which is the company’s favored method of expansion. Next year, a 7,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to open in Valencia, California. Two lease negotiations also are underway for sites in Colorado and Hawaii. During October, the BJ’s in Portland, Oregon was granted the right to install video poker machines by the Oregon State Lottery Commission. The company has applications pending to add video poker to several of its other Oregon locations.
More Concepts
The company operates two other concepts, trading as BJ’s Pizza & Grill and BJ’s Pizza & Grill/OTC (over the counter) at 10 locations. BJ’s Pizza & Grill is a version designed to fit a variety of trade areas and does not have the on-site breweries. The OTC concept offers guests a simplified version of BJ’s, and is more suitable for lower income demographics and urban trade areas. Locations are currently operating in California and Oregon. These concepts are not being aggressively expanded, company officials said, noting that most were driven by supply and demand.
The 11-unit Pietro’s Pizza in Oregon and Washington also are owned by Chicago Pizza & Brewery. Several of those locations have been upgraded to the BJ’s Pizza restaurant format, while the others await conversion within the next year, the company said.
The company prefers free-standing or end-cap corner prime locations of 7,000 to 10,000 square feet with outdoor patios and high ceilings. Takeovers of existing restaurant sites and conversions are preferred, however build-to-suits and ground leases will be considered. Other criteria for its site selection include multi-use entertainment retail centers and restaurant row corridors with strong lunch and dinner business, with a college or university nearby, and high pedestrian or vehicular traffic. Demographic requirements include a population of 100,000 within three miles with median incomes of at least $50,000.
Western States Targeted
The company looks for the assignment of favorable long-term ground leases or new 20-year leases, with a tenant improvement allowance. Expansion opportunities are sought in the West Los Angeles, South Bay, Glendale, Pasadena, Ventura County, San Diego, San Jose, Cupertino, Palo Alto, Walnut Creek/Concord, Los Gatos, Dublin, Santa Clara, Berkeley, Mountain View, San Ramon, and Hayward, California markets, as well as in the Phoenix, Tucson, Tempe, Flagstaff and Scottsdale, Arizona markets.
The management team includes Paul Motenko, CEO; Jerry Hennessy, president and CFO; Dean Gerrie, vice president, design and marketing; and Alex Puchner, vice president, brewing operations.
Submit all sites to Ira Spilky, exclusive real estate broker for BJ’s Pizza, Grill & Brewery, Ira Spilky & Associates, P.O.Box 6129, Beverly Hills, California, 90212 or by phone at 310-398-5543; Fax 398-3334. Visit Chicago Pizza & Brewery on the web at http://www.bjsbrewhouse.com