Most O.C.-Based Chain Stores Make Fast Recoveries

By Tuesday afternoon, all but two of the 22 El Pollo Loco chicken restaurants that had begun Monday as dark, powerless hulks with broken windows had been reopened.

And--as if to make up for the earthquake damage--business was booming.

Orange County-based fast-food vendors and retail chains with stores in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley escaped relatively unscathed from Monday’s 6.6-magnitude earthquake. These companies had reopened most of their stores in the parts of the city most severely damaged by the temblor.

None of El Pollo Loco’s outlets seemed to have suffered any structural damage, for instance, although the two still without power lost as much as several thousand dollars worth of chicken and other foodstuffs.

On the other hand, “a lot of people didn’t have power and couldn’t cook, and they didn’t want to be in the house anyway,” said Jeff Tandberg, operations coordinator for the Irvine-based chain, which operates 140 restaurants in California and the Southwest. “So business was very good.”

Few of the chain’s workers had trouble getting to work Monday and Tuesday, said Tandberg, because many arrive at low-wage jobs via public transportation.

Gradually, though, the restaurants were returning to normal throughout Tuesday.

So, too, were HomeBase’s building-supply stores nearest the quake’s epicenter in Northridge. All but the North Hollywood store were open by Tuesday, although the inside of the Simi Valley store was still a shambles. While employees swept up broken glass in the aisles, clerks were selling to customers through the front doors of the big warehouse-type store.

People queued up to buy flashlights, water heaters, batteries, plywood, drywall, brooms, buckets, cleaning liquids and all the other paraphernalia of disaster recovery. Business was brisk, according to an official of the Fullerton-based chain of 82 stores.

Then there was La Habra-based Food 4 Less, which says it’s getting to be an old hand at coping with Southern California’s disasters, including man-made ones like a riot.

The chain operates 200 Alpha Beta, Boys Market and Viva supermarkets--34 of which were without power Monday. Not half an hour after the 4:31 a.m. quake, employees were at the stores trying to get them cleaned up. An additional 20 stores had power but wound up with as much as 90% of their groceries all over the aisles, a loss of tens of thousands of dollars.

At the supermarkets that managed to open Monday, there was little demand for food; what people wanted was bottled water and batteries, since many neighborhoods were without power and water.

Lessons learned the hard way during the Los Angeles riots two years ago--when 40 of the company’s supermarkets were destroyed or damaged--came in handy. Among them: how to get food to the stores when the roads are blocked.

“We’re seasoned veterans, if anyone can be in this kind of experience,” said Food 4 Less Vice President Darius Anderson. “There were a lot of roads closed, but we worked out new routes to get our stores replenished.”

By Tuesday, only 11 stores--still waiting for power to be restored--remained closed.

Taco Bell also took it on the chin. More than 30 outlets around Los Angeles were left without power or clean water or both. Most were still closed Tuesday and were--at best--a day away from reopening.

Irvine-based Taco Bell, a Mexican style fast-food chain with 4,500 outlets nationwide, didn’t know how much revenue it would lose on the closed outlets.

And the jury was still out for Rockwell International’s big Canoga Park plant, where its Rocketdyne unit makes engines for the space shuttle.

The plant sustained some structural damage, such as cracks in tiles, a broken water pipe, broken windows and other damage. The extent of the damage and estimates of how much it will cost to fix it won’t be known until at least today, Rockwell said. Meanwhile, 6,000 workers were furloughed at home for a second day Tuesday.

There was better news at its Downey facility, where its Space Systems unit designs and makes manned spacecraft for the huge Seal Beach-based defense contractor.

That plant was closed Monday when a water pipe broke, but the damage was repaired and most of the 4,400 employees were back at work Tuesday.

Times staff writer Greg Johnson contributed to this report.

* REAL ESTATE MARKET: Homeowners swamped lenders with calls and buyers tried to cancel. D4

* IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT: Trucks manage to move products across the Southland. D3