L&L Hawaiian Barbecue

History

Eddie Flores Jr. purchased the L&L Drive-Inn located at 1711 Liliha Street on Oahu, Hawaii, in 1976. He bought it for his mother, Margaret Flores, and kept the name L&L even though it had no connection to the later chain. He renovated the building into a small walk-up restaurant for her to run. Johnson Kam became Margaret’s business partner. In 1977, Margaret sold her entire stake to Kam. After that single restaurant proved successful, it grew into multiple locations across the island. Flores returned as Kam’s partner and helped franchise L&L in Hawaii starting in 1988. By 1997, there were 30 locations across the state.

In early June 1999, Kam and Flores noticed a former employee was doing well selling Hawaiian-style plate lunches in the San Francisco Bay Area, despite a poor location. Seeing that the cuisine could succeed in California, they secured a spot in October 1999 inside the Puente Hills Mall in the City of Industry, California, for the first mainland L&L. Because people on the mainland had different expectations for food from a drive-in, Flores changed the name to L&L Hawaiian Barbecue to emphasize the Hawaiian food connection. When that first California location opened, there were 49 L&L restaurants in Hawaii. After that, the chain expanded throughout Los Angeles County, and in September 2000 it opened its first Orange County location.

The first L&L in the western United States outside California opened in Hillsboro, Oregon, in August 2001. A location followed in Henderson, Nevada, in July 2002. More opened later: Lynnwood, Washington, in March 2003; Mesa, Arizona, in June 2004; Provo, Utah, in August 2004; Aurora, Colorado, in August 2004; and Anchorage, Alaska, in November 2009. L&L opened its first location in the region of Manchester, Connecticut, in May 2003, but that site has since closed. The first New York location opened on Fulton Street in New York City in November 2004, and it too is now closed. The chain’s only current New York location is near the Canadian border in Evans Mills, though three more are planned for East Harlem, the Lower East Side, and Bushwick. In Florida, L&L opened a location in Jacksonville in April 2017.

Menu

The core of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue’s menu is the Hawaiian plate lunch, which comes with two scoops of rice, a scoop of macaroni salad, and a meat or seafood main dish. Asian and Polynesian influences show up in items like chicken katsu and kalua pork, while classics such as loco moco and saimin are also offered. The chain is famous for its spam musubi, which joined the menu in 1999. In 2021, L&L declared August 8 as National SPAM Musubi Day.

Accolades and milestones

L&L Hawaiian Barbecue has received several industry honors. In 2002, Nation's Restaurant News recognized it as one of the 50 Regional Powerhouse Chains. Three years later, Restaurant & Institutions Magazine placed it 314th among America's top 400 restaurant chains, while Restaurant Business magazine ranked it 15th out of 50 for national growth chains. That same year, Entrepreneur magazine listed L&L's parent company, L&L Franchise, Inc., as the 165th top franchise out of 500. In 2012, the chain released a cookbook titled "$266 Million Winning Lottery Recipes: L&L Hawaiian Barbecue Cookbook," written by Eddie Flores Jr. and illustrated by Jon J. Murakami, which includes many of its signature recipes.