Juan Pollo - The Best Tasting Chicken!

Juan Pollo - Early History & Future Vision

On 20th Anniversary, Juan Pollo Eyes Expansion

PASADENA STAR NEWS

20 years later, Albert Okura is planning ahead!

It will be exactly 20 years to the day Sunday since the doors first opened to admit customers into Albert Okura's first Juan Pollo chicken restaurant at 1702 S. Euclid Ave.

Two dozen and one locations later, Okura still isn't satisfied.

"I'm OK right now," he said. "I'm lagging behind just a little bit."

When he says "lagging behind," it's only because in 1994 Okura planned out Juan Pollo's expansion over the next 50 years.

With $17.5 million in estimated revenue last year and the September opening in East Los Angeles of Juan Pollo's first prototype restaurant for mass installation. Okura believes this restaurant stands poised to expand throughout Southern California.

If things go according to Okura's 50-year plan, the world is next.

"When I started in 1984, there was the Cold War and there was no Internet," Okura said. "The world has changed, and things are falling into place. I can't believe it."

That increasing westernization of China and the global spread of the iNternet are enabling Okura's plans to chug ahead. Emerging markets stand ready, already inundated with American culture, and Okura rhetoric is characteristically impatient.

There's a 20-year window in China to get over there and do well," Okura said. "The way I look at it, I'm still at the beginning. I still have a long way to go."

Before he'll be satisfied, changes have to be made, starting with Okura himself.

"To be a part of a big company, I can't be a controlling person," Okura said. "I have to pull people together."

His inspiration was a simple one.

"I have been eating in McDonald's since the 60's," Okura said. "The McDonald brothers and Ray Kroc were in the right place at the right time."

Okura was in the right place at the right time in 1982 when he met Armando Parra. A year later, Okura's uncle offered to invest in a restaurant in Ontario. Inspired by El Pollo Loco's simplicity of menu, he decided to open something similar, and he accepted his uncle's offer.

After a brief period of confusion, he remembered that Parra explained that he'd used rotisseries to make chicken in his native Mexico.

Okura ordered the rotisserie cookers and, a week before shceduled opening, Parra put together the recipe they've used ever since that first day of business, Jan. 18, 1984.

"I never doubted myself or what we were doing." Parra said. "It was something that people loved, no matter what country they came from. Everybody always said, this is just like back home."

Parra's recipe, mixed with a dash of Okura's drive, has made all the difference."He has his goals, and he works every single minute of his life pursuing that," Parra said.

Those who've crossed business paths with Okura say much the same thing.

Jack marcus, owner of JM Productions in San Bernardino, struck up a cartoon image promotion deal with Okura 10 years ago, starting out with cartoon-chicken pogs and working his way toward chicken bobble-head dolls.

"Slbert's a driven man." Marcus said. "I see him living his dream. He knows the business and he's driving the company accordingly. It's good to see a business that works the way it's supposed to work."

And Okura believes that business model will take his rotisserie chickens across the globe.

"Everything's kind of falling into place," Okura said. "It's unbelievable that it's happened so quick."

Global Chicken Ambition

THE PRESS ENTERPRISE

With fitting symbolism, Albert keeps his corporate headquarters at the site of the original McDonald's on E Street in San Bernardino. Albert talks about how the fast-food biz really boomed in the United States in the '60s and '70s, as McDonald's imitators saturated suburbia.

But now the U.S. fast-food biz is a mature market. Labor costs are high, regulations are heavy and it's hard to find disciplined teen workers, according to Okura.

The future of fast-food is overseas, he says, in countries such as China, India and Indonesia. Everybody eats chicken, he says. And his chicken is tender, tasty and cheap. (Deals include two whole chickens for $12.49 with a coupon, or two big chicken tacos for $1.45.)

"It's so clear to me," says Okura, 50, and married with three kids. "I'm in the right place at the right time." It wasn't quite so clear to me just how he was going to make the bug leap overseas from the Inland Empire. But Okura is certainly persistent.

Growing up in Wilmington, Okura was a B-student bored with school and the rules and being stuck in a chair all day. Okura attended junior college, but says he did it to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War.

Okura always sensed he had a destiny - he just wasn't quite sure what it was.

He went on to work for Burger King and Del Taco, but set off on his own in 1984. Albert was trying to imitate El Pollo Loco, which was very hot at the time. But his future wife's brother-in-law, Armando Parra, pointed out that the old Winchell's building he moved into in South Ontario was too small for the big flame broilers.

Parra suggested rotisserie chicken, instead. Parra came up with a marinade recipe and helped him set up the system. Business was slow early on, but Okura was committed to sticking with it for five years no matter what.

Juan Pollo caught on faster than that. He opened his second restaurant in San Bernardino in 1986. From there he was off and running with a small chain that got lots of good press in the local papers.

"I started to be myself," he says. "The more I was myself, the more results I got." Okura says he stopped following the be-nice rules he learned in school and in the corporate world. He had a tendency toward temper tantrums as a kid, and today this impatient perfectionist says he sometimes yells at employees when they aren't concentrating on the customer. But good workers are rewarded. "The bad workers, they hate me," he says. "If you are about the customer, I will care about you."

Bored by textbooks in his school days, Okura today reads biographies of entrepreneurs such as former McDonald's honcho Ray Kroc and Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.

Still, Okura has a lot of work ahead of him to reach global fame. Though his chicken in good, many of his stores are dingy. He's working on a prototype store that would provide a better model for expansion. His idea is to have his rotisserie chickens right in the front window to lure people in. He considers ethically-diverse Southern California the perfect test kitchen to see if this chicken will sell around the world.

He sees the collapse of communism, the rise of the Internet and today's interconnected global economy all aiding his dreams for a worldwide chicken empire.

Okura says he doesn't know when or where he will make his first overseas move. But he's got time. Okura expects that with advances in medicine he'll live to 125 or maybe 130 years old.

And I expect he'll keep on cluckin'

The New King Of Chicken