White-hot California Pizza Kitchen seems to be cooling, if only slightly.
The Los Angeles pizza purveyor, which has posted 15 consecutive quarters of same-store-sales growth, still appears on track to continue that streak. But CPK has trimmed its second-quarter earnings projection by 2 cents, to 21 cents per share.
California Pizza cited 2007 revenues to date and a one-time, two-cent charge related to marketing and developing its budding fast-casual chain, ASAP.
“Rising mortgage rates and energy costs are probably affecting demand everywhere,” Chief Financial Officer Sue Collyns said in a phone interview. “Our demographic seems to withstand those pressures a little more than most.”
CPK posted a comparative sales jump of 5.4 percent during the second quarter, while revenues were up nearly 17 percent. Full earnings will be reported August 7.
With those numbers, Collyns said the only reason for a dimmer outlook is to put aside some money for the ASAP chain, a scaled-down version of CPK with an abbreviated menu and takeout focus.
Conrad Lyon, analyst for FTN Midwest Securities Corp., said the numbers just don’t seem to add up.
“Given what we know about the commodities environment in front of us, I would have thought they might have guided down more than that,” he said.
Lyon said that the expectations given the revenues reported and the same-store-sales growth seemed to indicate that newer stores weren’t enjoying the same robust honeymoon period of their predecessors.
“The stores opened in the quarter seem to be decelerating a little bit,” he said.
As for the ASAP gamble, Lyon said he expected that CPK will be required to keep tweaking the concept, but he has little doubt that it will succeed, since there are plenty of hungry and time-starved people who like BBQ chicken pizza.
“You have to get the right-sized box, the right food offering,” he said. “Once they get those two pieces, it should be successful.”
Jewel in the Crown
There is a new jewel in Two Rodeo’s crown. The Bagdley Mischka store, which once presided over the coveted real estate at the top of the Spanish Steps, and overlooking the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, is gone. In its place is Garrard, a British crown jeweler founded in 1735. This is the company’s first U.S. flagship store.
“We looked around and this site just had our name on it,” said Garrard marketing director Imogen Scrutton.
The two-level location features a private upstairs lounge where clients may stage engagement proposals, or peruse gems hand-selected for them that will range in price from $180 to $14 million.
Scrutton declined for security reasons to name the number of employees that will staff the store; Garrard is just two blocks from Van Cleef & Arpels where three people were killed in 1986 in a horrifically bungled robbery.
Garrard Worldwide Chief Executive Robert Procop is a native Angeleno who founded Diamonds on Rodeo in the 1980s. Procop, whose company did not use a leasing agent to score the enviable space, said his years of Beverly Hills experience were a big advantage.
Setting up the store, Procop said, he also wanted to “replicate the London experience,” which meant getting a special permit from the city to use red awnings on Rodeo Drive.
Garrard held a party for 400 glitterati to open the store Tuesday and invitees were able to view a host of eye-popping gems, including the Great Chrysanthemum, a 104-carat brown orange diamond mounted in a platinum necklace with pear- and round-shaped diamonds. Retail value is about $6.5 million. Proceeds from the great gem’s sale will go toward building mobile medical shelters for children suffering from AIDS in Africa.
Things are definitely buzzing on Rodeo Drive. The Beverly Wilshire’s Escada store recently reopened, to national acclaim, after nearly one year of renovations.
The Rodeo Drive Committee also elected new officers to three-year terms.
Committee members include Kathy Gohari of Georgio Armani, Colleen O’Kane of David Yurman, Chuck Dembo of Rodeo Drive Properties, Laura Frazier of St. John Boutique, Donna Snyder of Louis Vuitton, Susan De George of Bernard K. Passman Gallery and Museum, James Jahant of Brooks Brothers, Catherine Kiek of Lladr & #243;, and Peri Ellen Berne of Fendi. Thomas J. Blumenthal of Gearys Beverly Hills is president.
Staff reporter Emily Bryson York can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 235, or at
[email protected]
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