Small Regional Chain Outshines McDonald's, Burger King

Two enterprising young men started a hot dog stand on a busy street in a small, Midwestern town. They worked hard, and over 40 years later, they have a group of fast food places and restaurants that serve the entire Chicago area with remarkably good food, and are starting to expand across the US.

Portillo's is their main restaurant, and is run by Dick Portillo. Dick is the president, owner and co-founder of the Portillo Restaurant Group, which includes Portillo's Hot Dogs, Barnelli's Pasta Bowl, Keywester Fish and Pasta House with Hemingway's Bar, and Luigi's House. His brother, Frank Jr., is president, owner and co-founder of Brown's Chicken and Pasta, the place to go for fresh, good chicken in Chicago.

Both Dick and Frank Portillo got their sense of hard work and great customer service from their parents. Their father, who died recently at the age of 98, worked hard all his life to support his wife and family. The boys grew up in a poor neighborhood in Chicago and were very enterprising young men. Now highly respected in today's food industry, they took good food and consistent service to the public and the public responded.

Portillo's has a great hot dog. It has a bite because of its casing, and comes with the typical Chicago hot dog condiments. Their beef and sausage sandwiches are also available in larger packages for catering. Their fries are always hot. The burgers are grilled and come on a big bun with lots of condiments. As with everything they serve, the food can be ordered any way you like.

The chocolate cake is called Soon-to-be-Famous. It is their mother's recipe, and our family frequently buys a whole cake for get-togethers. It's like homemade, and very good. The other items on their menu are also terrific.

Each restaurant has a different theme and is individually designed. They have people who go around the country to find the older displays, making a small museum in each restaurant. They don't have to do this, but it is a nice touch and keeps an individual feel to each place.

Why can't McDonald's, Burger King, Arby's or Wendy's come up with food this good? I know they go for consistency, but so does Portillo's. The Portillo's management style and production processes are studied by other food businesses because it works so well.

I want a good hamburger or hot dog from the other fast food giants. First they need to make a good product, and they haven't. They serve the food the same almost every time I go there, which is good, but it's nothing I look forward to.

The service also has a long way to go with the fast food giants, also. Portillo's makes the food mostly when you order it, but I can still get food in a short amount of time, fresh and hot. How many times have you gotten a bun that was already stale and hard? For breakfast entrees, the biscuits and buns are more often hard than fresh. And they put cheese on everything - a cheap way to "add value" and up the price. Would you normally put cheese on your fish? Me neither.

One experiment I did out of frustration was a consistency check at one of the fast food places. I went to McDonald's for the same item - a sausage and egg biscuit - for a period of two weeks, Monday through Friday, every day, for a total of ten days. It normally comes with a slice of cheese. I separate the biscuit and eat the sausage patty with one half of the biscuit and the egg with the other half of biscuit, and I don't want the cheese. It's oily and has no flavor, and I certainly don't need the extra calories. So I ordered the sausage and egg biscuit without cheese every day. Sometimes I added a diet coke, sometimes I didn't.

Out of the ten days, six days resulted in half a biscuit that was hard and stale. Even though I ordered it very plainly without cheese, saying the phrase "without cheese" at least twice, and sometimes adding the phrase in Spanish, I still got the cheese on the biscuit 8 days out of ten. And one day it was on an English muffin, not the biscuit.

Maybe the fast food giants can't afford to deliver a good product consistently and keep their stockholders happy. I'm sure they would put a large part of the blame on the quality of staff they have available to hire, but Portillo's hires from the same pool of employees.

Frank Portillo Sr. frequently reminded his boys to enjoy life and avoid stress. Both Frank Jr. and Dick enjoy what they are doing, and are successful at it. There are lots of other hot dog places in Chicago, but people know they can always get a tasty hot dog, burger or beef sandwich at Portillo's, and are rewarding these guys with loyalty. The loyal customers get rewarded with great food at a decent price in a decent length of time.

This is all we ask.