Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
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for the Americas. "We intend to capi- talize on this, making our presence felt and planting our flag in the majority of the capital cities of every country south of Mexico." In Central America Hard Rock has a unit in Panama City and is set to open one in San José, Costa Rica. Casual-dining restaurants are those that offer full table and bar ser- vice, which in much of Latin Amer- people in Latin America, twice the U.S. population. The growing middle class looks for "a delicious meal and outstand- ing service at reasonable prices," said Alejandro Desmaison, general man- ager of Delosi, a Peruvian company that holds the rights to several U.S. food franchises, including Chili's Bar & Grill. "The region's political and economic stabil- ity is attracting foreign chains, pa rticu la rly from the U.S., which are aggres- sively expanding overseas." To be sure, APPLEBEE'S PLANS TO OPEN EIGHT RESTAURANTS IN HONDURAS. CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHEN'S 10 RESTAURANTS IN MEXICO DO A BRISK BUSINESS. ica, can cost from $10 to $20 per person. The growth potential here is huge, because while casual-dining restaurants in the U.S. typically do roughly $100 billion worth of busi- ness, Euromonitor International reports that Latin America's coun- terparts sold just shy of $4 billion worth in 2010 (the most recent fig- ures available), and this despite the fact that there are some 600 million 222 SCT / MAY 2012 Latin America suffers no short- age of places to dine, particu- larly in such cu- linary centers as Buenos Aires, Lima, Mexico City and São Paulo. But the number of op- tions drops when it comes to sit- down restaurants for the family, particularly those with young chil- dren, says Jon Aboitiz, a res- taurant consul- tant in São Paulo who specializes in the region's fast-food and casual- dining market. Developers looking to differentiate their malls are particularly receptive to these restaurants. When Scala Shop- ping opens this October in Quito, Ec- uador, its dining options will include Ecuador's Noe Sushi Bar and Sports Planet chains plus Colombia's Crepes & Waffles. And an Applebee's will open along with CityMall this year, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. This will be the chain's eighth Applebee's since its arrival in Honduras in 1999. Mexico and Brazil are especially lu- crative markets, with Mexicans spend- ing nearly $43 billion dining out every year. Casual dining, which is projected to grow there at a 5.6 percent annual rate through 2014, accounts for just 2.2 percent of that total, according to Alsea Group, a major franchiser of U.S. casual-dining chains. In Mexico Alsea operates 10 Cali- fornia Pizza Kitchen restaurants and 33 Chili's Grill & Bar units. In February Alsea announced the $137 million pur- chase of Italianni's, a chain of 52 Italian restaurants in Mexico. Alsea opened P.F. Chang's first restaurant outside the U.S. in October 2009, in Mexico City, and has launched eight more since. "When we opened, we did not know how well we would do, since it was our first international store," said Mike Welborn, president of P.F. Chang's global brand development. "It did very well, and we have continued to open stores throughout Mexico." In Decem- ber P.F. Chang's opened in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where its sales volume per square foot are the highest of all its res- taurants worldwide, and other units are on tap for Puerto Rico. Alsea's agreement with P.F. Chang's calls for opening 30 restaurants in Mex- ico and a total of 17 across Argentina, Chile and Colombia within 10 years. The first Chilean unit is slated for some- time in the second quarter, in Santiago. Sites are being scouted for Argentina and Colombia for 2013. P.F. Chang's is seeking partners for Brazil and for Cen- tral America, Welborn says. "So far, ev- ery place in Latin America we have been to has been successful," he said. Hard Rock, meanwhile, is in "active negotiations" with franchisers to take the brand to Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salva- dor, Guatemala and Honduras over the