In early May, a new BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse opened in Orlando, the fourth restaurant in Orlando and 16th on Florida for the Huntington Beach, California-based BJ's Restaurants Inc. The 280 seat casual restaurant is about 8500 square feet located at Sand Lake and International Dr. at the gateway to Orlando's Convention Center corridor. President, CEO Greg Trojan added that the company’s next opening is scheduled for mid-May in Palm Beach, Florida adding that the company is on track to open eleven new restaurants this year. Four have opened to date. The BJ’s Restaurants development team is now focused on finalizing its 2015 real estate pipeline. Also in early May, the company reported financial results for its first quarter 2014 in which total revenues increased 9.1 percent to $205.8-million. Trojan noted that sales and operating trends improved during the second half of the quarter after several weeks of severe weather and industry-wide traffic headwinds at the beginning of 2014. "As a result of the momentum in the latter part of the quarter, comparable restaurant sales, restaurant level margins and operating margins exceeded the expectations we set at the time we reported fourth quarter results in mid-February,” he said. During the quarter that ended on April 1st, 2014, comparable restaurant sales were down by 2.9 percent. In the first quarter, BJ's opened two new restaurants in Gainesville, Virginia and Little Rock, Arkansas and currently plans to open three restaurants in the second quarter. “To achieve our goal of opening new restaurants with the lower-cost 7400 square foot prototype, we now plan to open a total of eleven new restaurants this year and delay the opening of four restaurants until the first half of fiscal 2015,” he said.
BJ's Restaurants Inc., 7755 Center Ave., Suite 300, Huntington Beach, California 92647 (714/500-2400 www.bjsbrewhouse.com)