This week on the Titans of Food Service podcast, Nick Portillo speaks with Elisia Flores, the CEO of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue. Elisia discusses her remarkable journey with her family-owned restaurant chain, which has grown into a global brand with over 200 locations. Elisia shares her unique perspective on managing a large business while maintaining the authentic flavors that define Hawaiian cuisine. Nick and Elisia delve into the challenges and triumphs faced during the pandemic, highlighting how L&L adapted and thrived amidst the chaos.

TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Intro to Titans of Food Service

(01:37) Hawaii's Unique Food Scene

(02:21) Meet Elisia Flores, CEO of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue

(08:29) The Founding Story of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue

(20:12) Navigating the Pandemic as a Restaurant Leader

(25:53) Future Goals: Expanding to 500 Locations

(27:15) Conclusion and Final Thoughts

RESOURCES

Portillo Sales

CONTACT 

Nick: nick.portillo@portillosales.com

There are a million ways to make money in the food service industry.

You just have to find one.

On the Titans of Food Service podcast, I interview real life movers and shakers in the food game who cut through all the noise to get to the top.

My name is Nick Portillo, and welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast.

Let's jump right into it.

Welcome back to Titans of Food Service.

This is season three, and on the season, I'm doing my across American 50 weeks tour where I interview one titan of food service from every single state in the country.

And on this episode, I'm going to be traveling to the beautiful islands of Hawaii.

And to welcome the state of Hawaii, I'm going to be joined by Alicia Flores, who's the CEO of L& L Hawaiian Barbecue.

Now, L and L Hawaiian Barbecue has grown into a global brand with over 200 restaurants worldwide, making it the most successful restaurant franchise to expand outside of Hawaii.

You'll see in our conversation between Alicia and me, she's managing a very, very large business and she gives some great nuggets and tidbits on how she does that and what her day to day life really looks like and some of the things that she learned throughout the pandemic.

But L and L has been recognized as one of America's top global franchises by Entrepreneur magazine.

It's been named a Top 400 restaurant chain by Restaurant Institution magazine and honored as one of the top 50 regional powerhouse chains by Nation's Restaurant News.

Alicia has continued to grow L&L's legacy while maintaining the authentic flavors that bring a true taste of Hawaii to the world.

Before I dive into the conversation with Alicia, let's take a little look at Hawaii's unique food service scene.

I like to do this every episode, give like a quick one or two sentence, quick tidbit about the state.

So Hawaii, it's a melting pot of cultures and its cuisine reflects its influences from Polynesian to Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese traditions, among others.

The iconic dish plate lunch featuring rice, macaroni salad and a protein like teriyaki chicken or kahlua pork is a beloved staple across the islands.

And we touch a little bit on that in the conversation.

Now, without further ado, let's go ahead and welcome Alicia.

All right, Alicia, welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast.

I appreciate you taking time out of your day to come and meet me.

Aloha.

Appreciate you having me here today.

Yeah.

So what island do you live on?

So I'm on Oahu in Honolulu, probably the most well known town in Hawaii.

Yep.

So my day job is actually I'm a food service broker.

So I represent different products and sell them into food service operators and distributors.

And we actually have an office in Honolulu.

Oh, fantastic.

Well, we should meet up in town sometime.

Yeah, yeah.

So we.

I'm based here in Orange County, California, so we have offices in California, a couple in California, one in Nevada, and then one in Hawaii.

We've got a general manager out there and another sales rep as well.

So we've been in Hawaii now for over a year.

And it's a beautiful place and a great market, too.

And I've learned so much about the islands, at least the food part of it.

Yes.

We are always a very enviable account for our vendors to try to win because they like that they have to come out here to meet with us.

Yeah, I'm sure.

I'm sure.

So how did you get into the food business?

So that's the easy one.

I was born into it.

So I'm the CEO of L& L Hawaiian Barbecue.

And it was actually founded by my father, Eddie Flores, and his business partner, Johnson Cam.

And it was founded almost, you know, a little over 45 years ago.

And so it existed before I did L, and L was a part of my life, my whole life.

Didn't always expect to be in the business, but also maybe kind of always expected to be in the business.

Yeah, I feel that my.

So my business, I work with my dad.

He had been a food broker his whole career, so.

My whole life, yes.

And coming out of college, I was like, I want to be in finance.

Yes.

I want to help people with their money problems.

And never thought I'd be in the food business, but here I am, and it's a great career.

It is.

And so my background is finance as well, corporate finance.

And never once I was away.

I never wanted my dad to be my boss my entire life.

So the intention for our family was that I would take a job elsewhere.

And I actually really enjoyed my other job and thought about not coming home, not being back in the business for a long time.

But eventually I made the decision to come back into L and L.

And it's been fantastic.

It's the best industry to be in, I think.

Absolutely.

Did you.

Have you always lived on the islands or did you ever leave the island?

So I left for.

Yeah, I was born and raised here.

Left for college.

I went to college in Southern California, and then after.

After my undergraduate, I worked for General Electric.

At the time, they owned so many more business units.

So I had the chance to work the United States and in a couple other countries.

So I really got to get, you know, off the island and explore a lot.

And now that I'm back home again, nothing better than being in Hawaii.

Yeah, I'm sure.

I'm sure.

Where did you work abroad?

Yeah, so I worked.

I was a corporate auditor for a couple years and one of my assignments was at a bank, an Italian bank.

So I worked in Milan and got to travel to different places.

I worked in Canada, we count that as international.

So it was fantastic.

You know, I was living kind of this very exciting life of a corporate life in different and fun business units, banks.

At the time, GE owned NBC Universal.

Very different from the restaurant industry.

But I have to say I think the restaurant industry has its own things about it that make it so unique and exciting.

Even compared to things like entertainment or banking.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

I've.

I lived in Florence only for four months.

I didn't study abroad.

When I was in school, I went to Chapman University, which is.

I don't know if you're familiar with that.

It's a small little school in Orange County.

Yeah.

When I had the opportunity to go out there.

Yeah.

When I lived in Milan, I was.

My apartment was on top of a bakery and on my way to work was a gelato store.

So I gained so many pounds in my time living there because I had a croissant every morning and a gelato every night.

It was a fantastic life.

I love that.

That's so cool.

So when you get into the family business, when you get into L and L, Hawaiian barbecue, it looks like you start in finance as the chief financial officer.

Is that correct?

That's right.

So I came in as a cfo again, my background being finance, and we didn't really have any financial leadership in the company at the time.

Nice.

Is your dad still involved in the business?

He's still involved.

So as a founder, as an entrepreneur, I don't know if your dad's the same.

You know, he's going to work till the day he dies.

So he's our chairman now.

Comes into the office every day.

He's sitting in the office across from me right now, and he loves it.

And I'm grateful for the privilege of being able to work with him and learn from him.

You know what's so interesting about family owned businesses or working with family is I'm sure you've probably told others like, yeah, I work with my dad and.

And they're like, oh, how is that?

I feel like when it comes to family business, it's like you have two extremes.

It works really well or it doesn't work at all.

And, you know, for the dynamic with my dad and me, what has helped us is, you know, he has far more experience than I do being in this industry for so long, but he takes my advice and he lets me take risk and he likes.

Lets me make decisions and do things like that.

And so I feel like, hey, this actually feels 50, 50 here.

Like it's an actual partnership and it really works for us.

Yeah, I agree with your analysis.

Family business is a very, very tricky thing.

I think when it works, there are so many synergies that make it even more special than just a normal sort of organization.

But it has its own challenges as well.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So let's go back to the very beginning.

How did L and L even come to be Right?

So again, founded by my father, Eddie Flores, and his business partner, Johnson Cam, Both were immigrants to the United States, you know, had very different paths.

My dad actually bought L and L Started as a dairy by Korean immigrants to Hawaii.

And they eventually created L and L Drive in, which is a.

In Hawaii, we have maybe, you know, the state food of Hawaii, we like to say, is the plate lunch, which is what L and L serves, which is two scoops of rice macaroni salad and your entree, protein entree.

So L and L Drive in was, you know, one location restaurant on Liliha street here in Honolulu.

My dad, as an immigrant, moved here with his parents.

Both of his parents had just a sixth grade education, and when they came to the United States, English was not their first language.

They worked very hard, though.

My grandmother was working at a restaurant, and my dad at the time was working in real estate and thought, wouldn't it be wonderful if my mom, his mom could have her own restaurant?

So she bought her the first L and L drive in and she worked there.

And after a couple of months, I think she realized, my gosh, her dream is not to own a restaurant.

It is so difficult to run.

You know, being part of the restaurant community is really fantastic, but running a restaurant is very, very difficult.

And that's when they brought in, I call him Uncle Johnson, but Johnson Cam.

So that was the beginning of L and L.

It started as a.

As a one location kind of, you know, American dream sort of situation.

And it just grew and grew and grew.

Nobody expected it to get as big as it did.

We started franchising, and then we eventually, you know, hopped the ocean and started franchising on the mainland.

And it's been wonderful.

And we have 230 loc now, but again, it just started as the one store with no expectations further than that.

What an incredible story.

When your family immigrated here to the United States, did they go to Hawaii first or did they start here on the mainland?

Yes, they landed in Hawaii.

And part of the reason.

So we're still headquartered and based here, and as long as I'm in charge, that's the intention to stay in Hawaii.

We wouldn't have.

Our company is rooted here.

The food that we serve is based out of Hawaii.

And there's no way our company, our family, would have had the success it did were it not for the Hawaii community that embraced us when my family moved here.

Yeah.

And of the 230 locations you have, are they.

How many are in Hawaii?

Sure.

67 are on the Hawaii Islands, and we're on the four main islands, and the remainder are in 14 other states across the country.

Were you part of the company when it started to get into the franchise model?

I was not.

I can't remember if I was still in high school or if I was in college, but for a large chunk of time, I briefly worked as a cashier in L and L.

Other than that, until I came back in the business, it was kind of just around, but I wasn't involved.

So I don't remember when we started franchising, but I think it was fairly early.

Maybe within 10 years of the founding.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

When the company did jump and come here to the mainland, you know, what is that like?

Is the business different here on the mainland versus in Hawaii?

Absolutely.

So, you know, our food, we call the comfort food of Hawaii.

And I think somebody.

People can always understand comfort food wherever you're from, but our food is very different than what you normally would see on the mainland.

We're not pizza, we're not subs, we're not burgers, we're not Mexican.

And so, you know, in Hawaii, we can open up a store and we don't have to explain to anybody what a.

What chicken katsu is, what barbecue mix is, what a spam musubi is.

But when we opened our first stores on the mainland, we had to.

We had the new challenge of educating customers what a plate lunch is, what Hawaiian barbecue is.

And, you know, our first stores were in California.

And the great thing about California is that we have a lot of people who have visited Hawaii are used to a variety of Asian food.

So it wasn't challenging.

It wasn't, you know, it was challenging, but not insurmountable.

We have since opened in different, in different places such as Texas, Atlanta, Florida.

And in those places where there, you know, as get further away from Hawaii, people are less familiar with Hawaiian, Hawaiian food.

You know, even to this day we have the challenge of educating folks what, what a plate lunch is.

The great thing is once people try it, they love it, but it's just getting them to take the first bite.

Yeah, that makes sense.

That makes sense.

And what about for you, what does your day to day look like as the CEO of the company?

Yeah, so it's always exciting.

So right now, you know, we're in September.

Our fourth quarter is going to be crazy.

For whatever reason, all of our store openings pushed into the fourth quarter.

So for the remainder of the year, we're looking to open to seven to 12 stores.

So for example, right now we have franchisees in for training in Hawaii.

We're working on the pipeline for the remainder of the stores.

So it's always exciting.

We're in a growth mode, so that makes it even more exciting.

But certainly it's busy days.

You know, what are you, you're, you're looking for growth.

It seems like, you know, what are you looking for when you're looking to add more units?

Is it, you know, is it certain operators you're looking for or is it locations?

What goes into that?

Yeah, you know, I think it's, it's certainly both.

You know, we want growth, but we want, we don't want growth just for the sake of growth.

One of the core values of L and L has always been around the franchisee.

And if our franchisees are successful, then the corporation and the whole brand will be successful.

So I don't want to bring on franchisees who are not a right fit.

And by right fit it could be they don't have, they don't have enough capital to open their store without, you know, pulling out their entire bank account or they don't have the right passion for coming into the industry.

Food service is so challenging.

Running a restaurant maybe is the most challenging that it's ever been right now.

And so, you know, I don't want people leaving their careers, pulling out their 401ks and this not working out for that for them.

And so part of that is location as well.

You know, people want to open up in certain places and we have a pretty good feel of locations that will be successful and try to steer people towards that.

So the whole key is, you know, we want growth, but we want successful franchisees and so making sure we have the right fit with the franchisee and the best location for them to be successful.

You know, one thing that's interesting about food service is let's just take the restaurant part of it, right?

There's so many operators out, there's so many entrepreneurs, there's so many people in it.

And which is great, but I would imagine there's also, especially on your side when it comes to the franchise model, is vetting out people.

Can they run their own business under your umbrella?

You know, can they manage a P and L and all of these different things and manage people?

Managing people is not easy.

It's the most challenging part of it.

Absolutely.

I mean, you see AI coming everywhere.

It makes it so much easier.

But, yeah, managing people is not.

It's not easy.

So I would imagine on your side, trying to go through and determine is this person or maybe, I'm sure maybe there's groups as well that you work with that buy up maybe multiple locations, are they well equipped to be able to handle the expectations and what it takes to run a restaurant.

That's right.

And I think entrepreneurs are amazing folks and that we get to work with entrepreneurs every day.

Our franchisees are entrepreneurs.

Right.

And they have so much energy and ideas and passion for the business, and that's really fun to be around.

But at the same time, when they join a franchise organization, we need to make sure we're providing the guardrails and the systems and the resources for them to be successful.

So it is a unique kind of a challenge finding the right person who is entrepreneurial but also wants to plug into a system.

Why would a franchise, a potential franchisee, choose L and L over other franchises maybe out there that they could join?

Yeah.

I'll give you maybe the three main reasons why I think franchisees choose us.

The number one reason this is not everyone, but this is a lot of at least 50% of our prospects, I say, is that they have this deep love for Hawaii.

So we either have people who were born and raised in Hawaii and are now living in another State or have spent time in Hawaii, they always come here for vacations or they have family here, and now they're living somewhere else.

And they so miss Hawaii.

They miss the community, the field, you know, whatever it is that's special to them about Hawaii, they miss that.

And they want to bring that to the place they are.

And L and L is a way that they can do that.

That is one reason why many franchisees are attracted to us.

A second reason is that we have really, really great fee structure.

So our franchise fees range from total royalty and advertising from 4 to 6% total, which is very low when you consider kind of the landscape of franchise organizations.

Again, our key focus is the success of the franchisees.

So the more successful they are, the more successful I will be.

But I don't need to raise my franchisees for corporation to be successful.

And I think that's attractive from a financial perspective.

Yeah.

The last reason is that we give our franchisees flexibility to really be entrepreneurs.

You know, like I said, we put in guardrails, but our guardrails are pretty wide.

And, you know, I think people want to own their own business, and when they own their own business, they want to have some amount of autonomy to make decisions, to decide how they want to build the community in their area to decide.

Maybe they have a great recipe, they themselves or one of the chefs they have have a great recipe they want to feature.

At L and L, you can do, you know, we have the key things that you have to participate and follow, but we also give you your flexibility to be your own, to be a business owner.

So, you know, I think that's unique to L and L as a franchise organization.

And I think it's something that our franchisees truly enjoy.

Going back to point two around the financial aspect of it where you're, you know, essentially all in your fees are 4 to 6%.

When you look at the other, you know, competitors, let's say, is that where does that stack up in terms of, you know, the overall going rate within the industry?

My guess is that the average total for the industry is.

Is at around 8 to 10%.

And it can.

And so we.

I'm so confident that we're in the bottom 10% kind of, you know, of the belt curve of where the fees would be.

We are very low.

We have discussions all the time about should we raise it, and we always decide against it because, again, it's key to our founding and to our values to be to have a model that's successful for franchisees.

And in the last couple of years, everyone in food service, I don't need to say this, but our margins have been chipped and chipped away.

And again, I don't want the franchise fee to be a reason why the business can't survive.

Yeah, that completely makes sense.

You know, food service is, it's a tricky one and you got your ups and downs and you just got to kind of ride through those things, especially during the pandemic.

How was that for you having, you know, I would imagine at that point you may not have had 230 locations, but you had to have over 100 at that point.

How was that navigating through the pandemic?

And honestly, one of the first selfishly thoughts in my mind was, oh my gosh, less than a year as CEO and I'm going to completely ruin the company.

It's all downhill.

I would say for us at corporate and for our restaurants, the first couple months of the pandemic were very challenging.

As a business, that was considered an essential service.

Restaurants remained open, but the rules about how you could operate your restaurant changed daily and you often wouldn't know what they are.

For example, in Hawaii, employees had to have vaccination cards.

Okay, very briefly, you had to check customers to make sure they were vaccinated.

To come in, okay, you had to put the stickers and make sure people were distanced.

Okay, you know, these rules came out and you try to follow them, but at the same time, you weren't 100% sure what the rules were today?

And were you going to get shut down if you didn't follow the rule that just got announced yesterday and you know, you weren't very sure about.

So plus, you know, everything in how you operate changed and sales in the, in the start were slow and your employees were, you know, not there.

Anyways, the first couple of months were challenging.

I don't know if it was because we are takeout organization, we're takeout restaurant.

And so with many other restaurants having to close during those periods, our volume picked up.

If our stores were not already on third party delivery, they entered third party delivery and third party delivery.

I have a lot of views on it, but it for sure pushed up revenues.

My feeling is a lot of people during this time, because it was a scary time, because their jobs were maybe at risk, they decided, you know, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

I've always wanted to own my own business.

This is the time to do it.

So after the first couple of months of being very scary, it just, you know, things kind of went into overdrive for L and L.

And it turned out to be a good time for us.

Yeah.

Isn't that interesting how that works?

You know, I remember.

And I remember there was different.

You know, I live in California.

We were pretty strict on the rules as well.

But, yeah, I remember Hawaii.

I can't remember exactly what we had to do, but there was definitely different things.

And it was kind of changed.

If you remember back, it's like changing every week with the.

Yes.

With the amount of infection and whatnot.

So it's just kind of navigating that.

Which was not easy.

Yes.

Yes.

I'm glad we're through it.

But it was.

Even from a leadership perspective, it was.

We came out of it stronger.

What do you think you learned about yourself in that time?

Yeah, you know, I think.

I think during the time the power of communication became.

It was already clear to me, but it became even more clear.

I'm convinced now.

You know, every.

Almost every challenge that we face in a business and personal, you know, anything is.

And in a family business, you know, even more so.

Communication is at the core.

And being able to.

Being able to communicate with people, again, the rules during COVID being able to understand the rule and disseminate that out to our franchisees as quickly as possible.

When PPP came out, being able to understand that and disseminate it out to franchisees as quickly as possible.

During COVID people were scared.

They didn't know what was going on.

So being able to take people's phone calls and talk to them and just being either an ear if they needed or advice if they needed, the power of communication was so important.

And that's.

That.

That was reaffirmed during COVID Yeah, I'm sure.

What about in present day, you know, going with.

With communication?

How do you get communication out to all of the franchisees?

Over 230 locations across all of the employees.

That's quite a bit.

It is, and it's challenging.

It's.

It's honestly, you know, one of the things that we're working on here in L and L is how do we improve franchisee engagement?

Of course we have, you know, email communication or email newsletters.

But honestly, any franchisee that wants my cell phone number can have it.

I can't say I appreciate them calling me all the time, but I appreciate that I can give it to them and they can call me if they have any issues and I will take.

Any franchisees call if they want to talk to me as a CEO of the company.

If it's a matter that urgent to them, I will take the call.

Because this is, you know, when you come into L and L, you're not just franchisee number, you know, 157, the florist family and you're part of the L family now and again.

My whole job is making our franchisees successful.

And if they have a concern that they want to share with me that I can try to help take care of, I want them to have that access.

Amazing, amazing.

You know, people, they stay for, you know, those types of things.

They, they like the company.

You know, I could speak for my own experience of having a company culture where people like to be and they feel respected and they feel heard, especially having your cell phone.

I mean, you're a very busy person.

I would imagine managing would seem probably a very large P and L if you put everything together.

So I think that's really cool.

That means a lot to, you know, people that work within your organization.

What about looking into the future?

What is something that you want to achieve that you've not yet achieved?

So that's a great question.

And you know, one of the things that I put and it's, it's a, it's a pretty lofty goal, but I feel like the more I say it, the more I have to make it happen.

But I want L and L to get to 500 stores.

So we set a 10 year goal a couple years ago.

This is more than doubling our footprint.

And we've always grown, but we've never grown at the rate that we would have to to get to 500 locations.

So that's my big, that's our big company goal.

And quite frankly, the reason, you know, 500 is a huge number.

It's a big number for us, but maybe it's a big enough number as well for L and L.

We again, I love that I know all the franchisees that I can give everyone my cell phone number and that they can feel really part of a family.

And I think 500 if we can do it.

It'll be a great time to pause and celebrate and make sure collectively what we want to do next.

Amazing.

Well, Alicia, I want to say thank you so much for taking your time to come on here and sharing your story.

It's almost time for lunch.

Maybe L and L might be a great choice.

I hope you do get a plate lunch and then get a little kanak attack or nap to take afterwards.

So thank you so much for having me.

I love being part of the food service.

I'm going to retire from it, and it's such a joy.

So thank you for letting me share a bit about our story.

Of course.

I appreciate it.