BJ’s Brewhouse Opens First South Florida Restaurant

After months of construction, BJ’s Restaurants has opened its first South Florida restaurant in Pembroke Pines. The Hunting Beach, Calif.-based company (NASDAQ: BJRI) said its BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse at 12100 Pines Blvd. opened for business this week.
Bill Bymel, a broker and partner with Retail Sites International in Fort Lauderdale, the exclusive leasing agent for the chain in southeast Florida, said the company was looking to open three stores a year in a region for the next four to five years.
The 7,500-square-foot, 265-seat restaurant replaces an On the Border Mexican-style restaurant, which was torn down, in the Pembroke Crossing shopping center. Bymel said that, rather than sink money into the aging restaurant, BJ’s bought the restaurant operator of its lease and renegotiated the deal with the landlord. It took a year to put it all together. He said the company spent about $4 million on the buildout.
Bymel said BJ’s is next looking to add restaurants in the Falls shopping complex and Doral, but also would like to be in Kendall, Boca Raton (“if we can get near Town Center”), as well as near Sawgrass Mills .. and in east Fort Lauderdale. Chairman and CEO Jerry Deitchle said the company is on track to open as many as 12 to 13 restaurants this year, and has “a solid pipeline of locations in place for potential 2012 openings.”
“Our new Pembroke Pines restaurant joins seven other successful BJ’s restaurants currently open in central and northern Florida,” Deitchle said in a news release. BJ’s Restaurants owns and operates 110 restaurants nationwide.
Source: SFBJ