Pollo Tropical was founded in 1988 by two brothers from Miami, Larry and Stuart Harris. The chicken recipe was the result of Larry's studying cookbooks on Latin American cuisine and conducting experiments on his backyard grill to perfect the marinade. From the outset, the restaurant's strategy was to grill the marinated chicken in the customers' view. There were no prepackaged, precooked menu items and no microwave ovens. By 1993, the company had eight stores and went public. It opened 19 locations in one year including those in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Tampa. Most of the new locations closed within a year after opening. In 1998, Pollo Tropical was sold to Carrols Restaurant Group, which was and is Burger King's largest United States franchisee. After a period of rapid expansion, there were sixty-nine company-owned locations and numerous franchisees in the Latin American and Caribbean regions. Pollo Tropical is now a subsidiary of Fiesta Restaurant Group, Inc., which was spun-off from Carrols Restaurant Group in 2012. Fiesta owns, operates and franchises the Pollo Tropical and Taco Cabana restaurant brands. Its headquarters have been located in the Doral area of Miami since 2017. The company currently owns and operates more than 140 locations throughout Florida and Georgia, plus five licensed restaurants on college campuses and 32 franchised locations throughout the Caribbean, Central America, South America and Puerto Rico.
Food concepts
In addition to its fire-grilled chicken, the restaurant provides other regional foods such as Mojo Roast Pork, rice, beans, corn casserole and plantains. In 2018 the company began offering fried chicken in addition to their traditional fire-grilled recipe.
After a decline in sales, Fiesta began closing its Texas restaurants, including Pollo Tropical locations in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin, in the second quarter of 2017. The Texas restaurants were shuttered as part of closings of 30 stores, including locations in Georgia and Tennessee. This was part of a trend announced earlier in 2017, as the company moved to slow development, having grown "too far, too fast." Instead of trying to open 30 new stores, the company planned to open 8 to 10, all in Florida, which is its core market. While its grilled chicken and other offerings are seen as healthy alternatives to fried chicken, hamburgers and french fries, the style and taste does not immediately draw customers outside Florida, and so requires some explanation to lure new customers in other markets.
