50 YEARS OF CAMPERO CHICKEN
The Central America Restaurant Business Unit has its own stores in Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica, as well as franchises in Honduras and Ecuador. Pollo Campero, founded in 1971, is its flagship brand. The company also has a fried chicken format to go: Pollo Granjero (Guatemala and Costa Rica) and Don Pollo (El Salvador).
Pollo Campero is a brand that reinvents itself every five or 10 years. Despite maintaining its same essence, it is always in process of innovation in restaurant formats, products and technology, such as with the use of apps and digital channels.
The brand is so strong that in 2006 it began its expansion to Asia, Europe (Spain and Italy) and the United States (where it has been since 2002).
In fact, the Pollo Campero USA Business Unit is one of the great bets of CMI Foods. At first it was a nostalgic brand, but the company intends to make it a relevant player in the American Union.
It currently has 79 restaurants and is one of the medium-sized brands with the greatest growth potential in its segment, so its goal is to double its number of stores in the next four or five years.
Once its current businesses are consolidated, in a horizon of between three and eight years, CMI Foods will analyze expansion to other markets in the Andean region. The idea is for this to happen with the 28 business lines it already has.
THE ARMS OF CMI
Between 2015 and 2017, the directors and shareholders of the company began reflecting on the size of the organization, its business footprint in each business and in the different countries, as well as the strategic approach required to address the following growth stage.
As a result of this analysis, the decision was made to form two business groups: CMI Foods and CMI Capital (divided into business units). This involved reconfiguration of the organization at the governance level, which consisted of entrusting the management of clusters and business units to non-family executives.