SYS-CON Media:
Spicy Pickle Franchising, Inc., fast casual restaurant operator serving all natural premium meat and poultry and other fresh products and franchisor under its Spicy Pickle and Bread Garden Urban Café brands, today updated its outlook for 2009.
Spicy Pickle CEO Marc Geman noted that “Like most restaurant chains and retail in general, the last quarter of 2008 and the first half of this year were difficult times due to the downturn in consumer spending. Our reaction to the reduced spending and increasing unemployment was to reduce our overhead to prepare for a slower anticipated growth rate. We refocused on unit economics based on changing customer habits. In the beginning of the fourth quarter 2008, we completed the purchase of our Bread Garden Urban Café chain in British Columbia believing that its growth rate would in the short to medium term outpace US opportunities. That has been the case.”
As to company operations and those of its franchisees, Mr. Geman noted that in late May 2009 a franchisee in Houston, Texas opened their first restaurant; and another franchisee has completed construction and will open a restaurant in Naperville, Illinois late July 2009.