Just in time for its 30th birthday, Cafe Rio is getting a serious glow-up. When it debuted in Utah back in 1997, Cafe Rio was nothing short of a phenomenon—the sweet pork burrito became the pinnacle of local cuisine, and the brand’s success arguably created the fast-casual niche that Utah lacked in the late 1990s. Over the years, however, customer reviews have reflected a downgrade in the restaurant’s quality.
This is one of the reasons Mike Burns was recruited as the restaurant’s new CEO in May of this year. Burns is a fast-casual restaurant veteran whose career has included executive roles at Rave Restaurant Group, Pei Wei, and Bojangles before becoming CEO of Latitude Food Group. Throughout his career, he’s become known for helping popular brands reclaim their former glory. “I’ve been here for eight weeks now, and the team has been super receptive,” Burns said. “There’s so much tenure here, and they really care about the brand.”
Of course, it helps that Burns is a self-proclaimed Cafe Rio fan. “I just love the food, which is the main attraction for me to go somewhere and try to make a difference,” he said. His assessment of the brand’s financials reminded him of other brands that he stepped in to revamp, which hearkens back to his time as a basketball coach. “I like being the underdog,” he says. “There are other brands that compete with us really strongly, and I feel like it’s always nice to have a little chip on your shoulder in a competition.”
Burns’ approach to managing the Cafe Rio brand is all about recapturing the restaurant concepts and flavors that made the restaurant a Utah classic in the first place. He took to online customer reviews and used them to paint an honest picture of where Cafe Rio was post-pandemic. “Going down these rabbit holes and Reddit threads are so intriguing to me,” he says.
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Since he became CEO, Burns has adopted a strategy of bringing back the old hits. “We hired a chef who is basically a food scientist and gave him all the original recipes and asked him to match them,” Burns said. “We’ve been testing them in six Utah restaurants pretty successfully and customer scores have gone through the roof.”
Based on these positive results, Burns will be overseeing Cafe Rio’s triumphant return to form with a rollout he’s dubbed “Sweet Pork Summer”. “The original sweet pork is back in every restaurant this July,” Burns says. This menu change will also coincide with Cafe Rio’s value menu, which will feature items under $10.
Dustin Larson, a regional market coach who has been with Cafe Rio for over 8 years, oversees over 30 stores across Utah and its neighboring states, and he credits the efforts of local teams for the positive changes. “I’ve got people that have been here for 20 years and their pride and passion has made it really easy,” he says.
Throughout July, for Cafe Rio floats will be hitting the streets during city carnivals leading all the way up to the Pioneer Day parade on July 24. “We’re in 16 different parades leading up to Pioneer Day,” Burns says. “Enough of the nonsense–we’re back to where we used to be.”
