Bojangles Restaurants To Return To Florida

Miami Herald:

Floridians who long for the Cajun-style chicken and buttermilk biscuits at Bojangles are in luck. The Charlotte, N.C.-based chain is planning to re-enter the Florida market in a big way.

Once there were 100 Bojangles restaurants in Florida and at least a dozen in Miami-Dade County. By 1990 all had closed.

You are in luck, Bojangles fans. The Charlotte, N.C.-based restaurant chain is planning to re-enter the Florida market in a big way. Famous for its Cajun-style chicken and buttermilk biscuits, the company has just one restaurant in Florida now — in Jacksonville — but wants to saturate the state within a few years.

Plans are to open a second restaurant by 2008 in Pensacola. The company sees market potential for up to 450 locations throughout the state and will initially focus its expansion on Escambia, Okaloosa and Miami-Dade counties.

The Florida locations will all be franchises, the company said. Potential franchisees are offered several store options including full-size restaurants in three models, nontraditional and co-branded — those connected to another business such as a grocery store, truck stop or next to a convenience store.

The company hasn’t done direct advertising for franchisees in South Florida recently, but plans to do a series of ads in the Wall Street Journal and in trade publications later this year.

But isn’t the chicken restaurant business a bit saturated in South Florida?

”Everybody is selling chicken,” agrees Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic, a Chicago-based research and consulting firm. “Chicken sandwiches are sold in almost every type of restaurant. There is a greater demand by consumers for healthier chicken — not fried but grilled, for instance.”

But he says he thinks Bojangles is a good concept. ”Cajun is a good position to differentiate it from others. The 450 units planned may not happen in five years, maybe in 15,” Tristano says.