Chicago-based poke restaurant Aloha Poke Co. has announced the company is opening two new corporate-owned locations in Chicagoland.
The company, which operates 19 locations in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., will open in Deerfield and Mt. Prospect at an unknown time, expanding Aloha Poke Co.’s hometown footprint to ten stores. The company, led by CEO Chris Birkinshaw, started in 2016 in a food hall in Chicago’s busy West Loop, offering its customers fast, freshly packed sashimi-grade fish paired with delicious, whole ingredients. With tremendous demand and affinity for the food and brand, Aloha Poke Co. has grown rapidly ever since.
The exact location of the new locations is unknown, but it comes on the heels of strong Q1 and Q2 performance, where the brand recorded +13% comparable store sales in the first half of 2022. On top of the new Chicagoland locations, Aloha Poke Co is opening 11 Houston franchise locations, including ten sites from Baryalay Razi, a multi-brand, multi-unit professional franchisee, expected to open his first store this fall in Richmond, TX.
“We are thrilled to continue our expansion in suburban Chicago,” Birkinshaw said in a press release. “As poke becomes a mainstream category, more and more customers demand a high-quality brand experience. Our repeat business is off the charts, and we’ve heard loud and clear that our customers want us to meet them, wherever they are, with new locations in our existing markets.”
