A&W opens 26 new restaurants in 2010
January 17 2011 - 5:00AM
PR Newswire (Canada)
VANCOUVER, Jan. 17 /CNW/ -- VANCOUVER, Jan. 17 /CNW/ - A&W Food
Services of Canada Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of 26
new restaurants in 2010. This compares with 22 in 2009, 20 in 2008
and 16 in 2007. The company now operates 730 restaurants in Canada,
of which 720 are franchised. Of the 26 new restaurants, 15 were
opened in Ontario, which remains the focus of the company's
strategic growth. This represents the first time that more than
half of the company's national new restaurant openings occurred in
Canada's largest province. One of the 15 Ontario openings was a
corporately owned freestanding restaurant in Orleans, the company's
second freestanding restaurant in the Ottawa market. Graham Cooke,
A&W's Vice President of New Restaurant Expansion, says he
expects the recent surge of new restaurant growth to continue for
at least the next 3-5 years. "We introduced a multi-site
development program in Ontario and Quebec in 2009 and interest from
existing and new franchisees has been enormous. We have since
introduced the same program into BC and Manitoba. We are now
essentially sold out in these two western provinces". Cooke went on
to say that A&W now has development agreements covering 110
locations, all of which he expects will become opened A&W
restaurants in the next 3-5 years. The real strategic challenge for
us now will be to find high quality real estate for our
freestanding restaurant program. This is especially true in Ontario
and Quebec. Among the 26 new openings this year were 5 downtown
locations - 3 in Vancouver, 1 in Calgary and 1 in Toronto - that
represent the first wave of A&W's new Urban concept. Targeting
time-pressed urban consumers who work and increasingly live in the
downtown core of several Canadian cities, the new concept will
typically appear in store-front locations in densely populated
urban areas. It features a slightly modified menu offering and a
more contemporary interior decor. Rob Fussey, A&W's Director of
Urban Development, says the concept has gained lots of early
interest with consumers. "We are very pleased with the early
results and will continue to target downtown markets in Vancouver,
Toronto and Montreal in the coming years". The first downtown
Montreal urban location at Concordia University is scheduled to
open in April this year. A&W is Canada's second largest
hamburger chain. Operating coast-to-coast, A&W restaurants
feature famous trade-marked menu items such as The Burger Family®,
Chubby Chicken® and A&W Root Beer®. To view this news release
in HTML formatting, please use the following URL:
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/January2011/17/c2806.html
pJ. Graham Cooke, VP, New Restaurant Expansion A&W Food
Services of Canada Inc. (604)988-2141 Website: a
href="http://awfranchise.com" cr="true"awfranchise.com/a/p
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