Bravo Brio Restaurant Group keeps growing, come recession or flat market.
The Columbus-based parent of Bravo Cucina Italiana and Brio Tuscan Grille restaurants expects to build between 40 and 50 restaurants in the next five years — about half of each format — some of them in high-population cities on the East and West coasts.
“We’re an aggressive growth story in a tough environment,” said Jim O’Connor, Bravo Brio’s chief financial officer, during a recent interview.
Considering that the casual-dining industry is not expected to expand in coming years, achieving that growth means Bravo Brio will have to take business away from other restaurants.
“We don’t look at the pie growing. We think this is a market-share battle,” O’Connor said. ” Those folks with better mousetraps are going to win.”
Winning restaurants put their stores in the right places, he said. Bravo Brio works with Buxton, a consumer analytics firm in Fort Worth, Texas, to pick the right spots.
Buxton finds locations where the best customers for each restaurant concept like to eat, said Paul Schlesinger, senior vice president of business intelligence for the Texas firm.
“You’re going to grab share” if you build restaurants in those locations, Schlesinger said.
Saed Mohseni, Bravo Brio’s president and CEO, told securities analysts on a conference call last week that he wants to add 50 percent to his restaurant count by 2018. That’s a slightly faster growth rate than during the past five years.
For a chain that has only 103 stores, “closing two units is a big deal,” said John Gordon, principal at Pacific Management Consulting Group in San Diego. “That is an indicator that the concept didn’t work in certain geographies.”
But they are saying they are more likely to put Brio, the chain with the more-expensive menu, rather than Bravo restaurants in areas that get a lot of business travelers who use expense accounts, such as New York City and San Francisco.
Brio customers spend an average $5 more than Bravo customers, Mohseni said.
“We like to say, if you see a Nordstrom’s, you’re likely to see a Brio” nearby, O’Connor said. ” If you see a Macy’s, you’re more likely to see a Bravo.”
In Columbus, the company operates Bravo restaurants on Hayden Road, and in Crosswoods Commons and Lennox Town Center. It operates Brio restaurants in Easton Town Center and Polaris Fashion Place, both higher-end shopping centers.
Analysts have both upgraded and downgraded Bravo Brio’s shares in the week since the company slightly scaled back its earnings and sales expectations for 2013.
The shares have risen more than 8 percent to $15.85 since Feb. 27, when the company released its 2012 results after the market closed.