Bibibop Asian Grill Moving into Los Angeles ShopHouse Locations

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The name posted on L.A.’s five ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen restaurants is about to change, but the food will remain similar now that another Asian restaurant concept has taken over the leases.

Columbus, Ohio’s Gosh Enterprises, which owns two restaurant chains, will replace the fast casual Asian chain owned by Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. with its own Bibibop Asian Grill. The acquisition will allow Bibibop, which serves a variation of the Korean mixed rice dish bibimbap, to more than double its number of locations, all of which have been in Ohio until now.

Chipotle announced that it would stop investing in ShopHouse, which it started in 2011, in October last year. Chipotle founder and co-Chief Executive Steve Ells told investors that the chain, which replicated Chipotle’s assembly line method of preparing food in front of customers, “was not able to attract sufficient customer loyalty and visit frequency to make it a viable growth strategy for us.”

Los Angeles was an early home of ShopHouse. Chipotle, which is headquartered in Denver, Colo., opened its second ShopHouse restaurant on Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood in 2013.

All of the L.A. locations, which also included stores on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, The Point in El Segundo, Beverly Boulevard in West Hollywood, and on Broxton Avenue in Brentwood, have closed.

Gosh Enterprises also owns Charleys Philly Steaks, a sandwich chain with 10 of its 570 locations in Los Angeles.

Caroline Anderson is a staff reporter covering retail, restaurants, and hospitality. She can be reached at [email protected].

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