Mr. Neeb: Actually, our company is what I call both a new and an old company new in the sense that we went public in 1996, did slip a little under the name Casa Ole, changed our corporate strategy and really became both a growth company and a consolidating company in the Mexican restaurant business. This year we changed our company name to Mexican Restaurants Inc. The original Casa Ole business was founded in 1973, and that's the legal entity that is the basis for everything we do. But one of the companies we bought is called Monterey, and they actually were founded in 1955. The Casa Ole founder was the chief operating person in that company. His name is Larry Forehand, and he really has been an instrumental part of building the company that we have today. We grow today through what we call the core and the growth side of our business. The core of our business is our Casa Oles and our Monterey's. Their primary responsibility is to raise their same-store sales and profits and to provide people for the growth side or our business. Our growth side is internal growth through what we call Tortugas, a coastal Mexican concept, very much a play on Cancun and Cozumel, with a mix of seafood items - and because we are coastal for Mexico, some Tex-Mex and some Baja cooking from the California Baja Peninsula. Then we also grow by acquisition. Our most recent acquisition is La Senorita, which is a dominant Mexican brand in what I would call the northern portion of the Southern peninsula of Michigan - Saulte Ste. Marie down to Lansing. And we look for acquisitions to supplement a 20 percent internal growth rate target. Our target growth rate for the company is to increase our earnings based on internal growth from same-store sale increases and profits, and from new-store openings with Tortugas.
Tickers included in this excerpt: CASA
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