L&L Hawaiian Barbecue
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| Industry | Restaurants |
| Founded | 1976 in Honolulu, Hawaii |
| Founder | Eddie Flores Jr. |
| Headquarters | Honolulu, Hawaii |
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Area served
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Key people
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| Products | Hawaiian Plate Lunch |
| Website | www |
L&L Hawaiian Barbecue, or simply L&L and known as L&L Drive-Inn in Hawaii, is a Hawaiian-themed franchise restaurant chain based in Honolulu, Hawaii, centered on the Hawaiian plate lunch (Hawaiian: pā mea ʻai).
Johnson Kam and Eddie Flores, Jr., purchased the original L&L Drive-In in 1976. The company expanded from its original base of Hawaii in 1999 into Californian markets. There are approximately 200 locations in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Guam. Outside of the United States, the company also has locations in New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
In 1976, Eddie Flores bought a small building that formerly housed a retail outlet for L&L Dairy on Honolulu's Liliha Street. He kept the L&L part of the name and remodel the building as a small walk-up restaurant for his mother to operate. This business was the first location of the growing L&L Drive-Inn chain that specialized in the plate lunch. After this single building business became a success, Johnson Kam joined Flores in the expanding the business to other locations within the state of Hawaii. To help in the expansion, Flores and Kam began to offer franchises, mostly to successful employees, in 1988 By 1997, there were 30 locations through Hawaii.
In early 1999, Flores noticed that a former employee was doing fairly well selling Hawaiian-style plate lunches in the San Francisco area despite the fact the restaurant was not in an ideal location. Since he realize that it was possible to sell Hawaiian-style plate lunches in California, Flores obtained a location inside the Puente Hills Mall in the City of Industry, California to open the first L&L location on mainland just a few months later in October. Since Californians had different expectations on the type of foods that are usually served at an eating establishment that are called "drive-ins" (i.e., restaurants with carhop service like the Bob's Big Boy restaurant in Burbank, California that sells burgers and fries) to that which most Hawaiians would expect to receive at an L&L Drive-Inn on the islands, Flores decided to change the name of the L&L locations on the mainland to L&L Hawaiian Barbecue to strengthen the chain's association to Hawaiian cuisine.
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Wikipedia