P.F. Chang’s is taking another stab at a limited-service spinoff concept. More than five years after selling off Pei Wei Asian Kitchen, the 300-unit Scottsdale, Az.-based casual-dining chain is testing out a fast-casual concept called Pagoda Asian Grill. The new offshoot already has three locations open in New York, Texas, and Florida, with a possible runway of 2,000 units.
“Pagoda for us is a very deep whitespace,” P.F. Chang’s CEO Eduardo Luz said during January’s ICR conference in Orlando, Fla. “We believe it is the bull’s eye of food trends: it’s flavorful, abundant, fast and easy. If we’re right about this, this is going to be a $2 million AUVs business with a 25% margin.”
Like many popular fast-casual concepts, Pagoda Asian Grill is capitalizing on the popularity of the Chipotle and Cava models, with Asian fusion bowls centric to the concept’s menu. Menu items include the Thai Peanut Chicken and Korean BBQ Steak bowls, and customers can also build their own bowls with ingredients like Sriracha chicken, Bulgogi steak, edamame, bok choy, and kimchi as options. Other menu items include a selection of wraps, kids’ meals, as well as wonton chips with a dipping sauce (an Asian-American take on the tortilla chips and salsa side dish).
Luz said that the tests of Pagoda have been going well so far and strongly believes that Asian fast-casual is a “huge whitespace” right now, that no other concept has filled so far. While P.F Chang’s tackles this market, the company would not be the first to try out an Asian fast-casual concept. In fact, Chipotle shuttered all locations of its Asian fast-casual concept, ShopHouse, in 2017.
“We believe that someone is going to look at that [fast-casual scale for Asian, and we believe that someone will be us,” Luz said. “We have gotten tests by now. We are opening one more lab in St. Petersburg [Fla.] It is very exciting…the initial signals we have for an Asian grill are very, very strong.”
The average check of Pagoda Asian Grill so far is $18 with 60% of sales off-premises, as compared with 35% of off-premises sales for P.F Chang’s.
P.F. Chang’s currently operates 200 company-owned units in 41 states, with nearly 40% of restaurants located in malls.
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