El Torito Chief to Take Lesser Role in Firm

The founder and chief executive of El Torito Restaurants, Larry J. Cano, will step down Tuesday to take a less active role in the company’s management, it was announced Tuesday.

Martin M. (Mike) Casey will succeed Cano as head of the Irvine-based dinner-house chain.

Cano, 63, will retain management responsibility for El Torito’s specialty restaurants, including Las Brisas, Chanteclair, Players, Remick’s and the El Torito grills in Newport Beach and the South Coast Metro area.

“Larry (Cano) founded the company and has been working for it . . . for 34 years. He doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life worrying about a $400-million business and all the details,” said Norman N. Habermann, president and chief executive of The Restaurant Enterprises Group of Irvine. El Torito is a subsidiary of Restaurant Enterprises.

Cano’s new role was created to allow him “to do concept and development” work, Habermann said.

Casey was executive vice president and chief financial officer with Restaurant Enterprises. Before that, he was vice president and chief financial officer of El Torito.

Restaurant Enterprises also announced Tuesday that Michael J. Hislop has been promoted to executive vice president of operations for El Torito. Hislop actually has had that assignment for the past several months, Habermann said, and “we’ve just made it official.”

El Torito has 187 restaurants in 25 states with 16,980 employees. In 1987, it reached sales of $402 million, which amounted to about one-third of Restaurant Enterprises’s sales that year of more than $1.22 billion, according to the company.