I just finished reading the PFCB and noticed that the company added a new risk factor to its 10Q. PFCB is now specifically talking about new stores taking more time to reach maturity. I can only conclude that management is seeing a “new” trend in the stores it has opened recently. Not that we need to find another negative for a casual dining company, it’s an interesting development. This also help explain why they reduced new store openings again!

The following is the new text from the 10Q filed yesterday:

“As of June 29, September 28, 2008, there have been no material changes to these risk factors. factors other than the change of the following.

Failure of our existing or new restaurants to achieve predicted results could have a negative impact on our revenues and performance results as well as result in impairment of the long-lived assets of our restaurants.

We operated 182 full service Bistro restaurants, 165 quick casual Pei Wei restaurants as of September 28, 2008, 48 of which opened within the last twelve months. The results achieved by these restaurants may not be indicative of longer term performance or the potential market acceptance of restaurants in other locations. We cannot be assured that any new restaurant that we open will have similar operating results to those of prior restaurants. Our new restaurants commonly take several months to reach planned operating levels due to inefficiencies typically associated with new restaurants, including lack of market awareness, inability to hire sufficient staff and other factors. The failure of our existing or new restaurants to perform as predicted could negatively impact our revenues and results of operations as well as result in impairment of long-lived assets of our restaurants.”