Loco is anything but crazy

We think it’s crazy how fast food restaurants do more assembling than actual cooking. Meats are reheated rather than grilled, guacamole is premade in a factory, and salsas have more preservatives than fresh produce – that’s just crazy.

That’s why every piece of our chicken is marinated using citrus and spices, then fire-grilled over a low flame for 60 minutes. Our guacamole is hand-smashed, every single day. We slice avocados for our Tostadas and Salads. And our mouth-watering salsa fresca and avocado salsa use real tomatoes, cilantro, and onion. Because at El Pollo Loco, we actually think cooking is a good thing.

To us, doing anything different would be crazy.

Ingredients of El Pollo Loco food

IS AN ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT

​​El Pollo Loco doesn't make fast food-we make homemade food fast. We believe food should fulfill you, not just fill you up. It should feel good as well as taste good. And it should connect you to the things you get fired up about.


Chicken should be marinated overnight. It should be grilled, not fried. That's why every piece of chicken we cook uses the same made-from-scratch, slow-cooked family recipe that our founder started with in 1975. Every day, in every restaurant.


We're pretty passionate about it.

cooked low & slow

FOR 60 MINUTES OVER AN OPEN FLAME

EVERY PIECE. EVERY RESTAURANT. EVERY DAY.

Pancho Ochoa, original founder of El Pollo Loco, standing in front of his first restaurant.

 
 

Pancho Ochoa's sister cooking chicken at the grill.

 
 

Pancho at register in Guasave, Mexico.

 
 

Exterior picture of the first El Pollo Loco restaurant in the United States, which opened in 1980.

 
 

Close-up of Grill Master chopping El Pollo Loco's famous fire-grilled chicken.

 
 

People standing in line to experience the taste of El Pollo Loco's Fire-Grilled chicken at one of their first restaurant locations.

 
 

Want to hear something crazy? we started out as a shoe store.

In 1974, our founder Pancho Ochoa was operating a shoe store. But he noticed his local restaurant was, shall we say, unreliable. And he just happened to have a family chicken recipe—a signature citrus marinade and a passion for fire grilled—that people really seemed to go crazy for. So he got a loco idea.

Over the next five years, Pancho opened 85 restaurants across Mexico. And then, in 1980, he opened his first US location in Los Angeles—a location still operating today.

Over 50 years later, we still grill with the same love, the same fire, the same delicious flavor. And the ingredient that makes us the G.O.A.T. of chicken: a little bit of Loco.

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