Noodles & Company: A Menu to Please All Customers

Getting the attention of the business press does not always mean that the news is good.  However, one of the nicest ways is a successful Initial Public Offering.  Noodles and Company, a casual restaurant chain headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado was able to accomplish this feat.  Wall Street had clearly underestimated the initial price of the stock, but investors did not. 

With so many difficult public offerings, what made this company so desirable?  A simple menu based on a food staple of so many cultures.  The company satiates the eating public’s desire for noodle dishes no matter the origin of that dish.  You can get a nice Far Eastern Thai dish or enjoy some nice traditional macaroni and cheese.  However, despite the universality of the noodle, not everyone is in the mood for pasta.  Noodles and Company does not consider that blasphemy, they consider that a marketing opportunity.  Their menu is diverse with offering such as cheese steaks and pork sandwiches.  The restaurant also includes a lower calorie menu with entrees under 500 calories.  The meals are reasonably priced at an average of eight dollars an entrée.  It is a no-nonsense approach that gives the people what they want and the people have responded accordingly.

Maybe Wall Street took its time warming up to this restaurant, but if you head west from the Atlantic, you will find almost 350 locations, 50 of which are franchises.  The largest concentration of Noodles and Company outlets is in the Midwest, and 50 more nationwide are on tap.  Some store sales growth is at solid 5%.  The company was founded in 1995.  Kevin Reddy, an industry veteran from Chipotle, has been CEO since 2006. Not exactly great timing, as the economy was headed toward a recession.  Despite this challenge, he doubled revenues and quadrupled operating incoming in the four years from 2008 and 2012.