Erik Van Horn describes opening three Southern California locations. Mission Viejo performed as expected. Huntington Beach, which they thought would be the strongest, lost money for two years. Irvine, the most expensive due to the Irvine Company's rent, became profitable immediately.
So what we did is we opened up our first one in Mission Viejo. We already had our second location lease signed. Everybody at the corporate office, we thought Huntington Beach was going to crush it. We thought that was going to be the best one, and we were already locked and loaded. We were building that out. We signed our lease on our third location in Irvine, and we're dealing with the Irvine company, which when you deal with the Irvine company, you're paying a lot more for rent and whatnot. So that was going to be our most expensive location. So So here we go. We got 3 leases signed, one open, one under construction, and the third lease signed. First one was average. We're like, "Okay, we're average. This is fine. This is what we predicted." Second one was a dog. We lost money day one, lost money for the first, I think, 2 years we lost money. And the third one opened up a few months after our second one did, and we were making money the day we opened.
