Customer Story
Using construction insights to drive restaurant growth
With Procore, Pollo Campero supercharged its American expansion by connecting teams, automating reporting and turning construction insights into better decision making
The Challenge
Pollo Campero’s U.S. expansion had gained momentum — but its construction management process was still stuck in manual mode. Each department tracked progress differently, relying on spreadsheets, emails and file-sharing platforms like OneDrive and Google Docs. The result was an inconsistent view of performance and costs, with no clear picture of where projects stood or why delays happened. As the company planned to triple its annual store openings, Director of Construction Adam Brown knew the current system couldn’t scale.
The Solution
Drawing from his experience implementing Procore at earlier jobs, Brown led Pollo Campero in adopting Procore. The goal wasn’t just to digitize processes — it was to align construction, design and finance around a single source of truth. With Procore, every new restaurant build could be tracked in real time, from early planning through closeout, creating seamless visibility across departments and greater flexibility for everyone.
The Results
- Unified project data across all departments in 21 states
- Strengthened financial transparency and accountability
- Automated manual reporting, freeing time for strategic planning
- Enabled real-time decisions about growth and capital allocation
- Standardized processes and improved forecasting through historical data
“Procore Financials allows us to make strategic decisions in real time. We can decide to be more aggressive with growth, pull something back or reinvest in existing stores.”
Adam Brown
Director of Construction
Pollo Campero
Building a foundation for smarter growth
Founded in 1971, Pollo Campero has long been a beloved restaurant brand with deep roots in Latin America. In 2022, the company began establishing a foothold in the US, with growth accelerating dramatically in recent years; the brand opened seven new locations in 2023 and 25 the next year, with 30 planned for 2025.
Rapid growth came with challenges. Each restaurant required input from multiple teams — design, development, construction, finance — except those teams weren’t working from the same information. “When I arrived, everything was being managed through email and spreadsheets,” Brown said. “Nobody really had an idea of what was happening during the lifecycle of a project.”
As a veteran of Procore implementations, Brown recognized an opportunity. The company needed not just better tools, but a better operating model — one where information flowed freely, and decisions could be made from data rather than instinct.
Visibility that drives accountability
Today, Pollo Campero’s six-person construction team manages 146 restaurant locations across 21 states, with Procore as the company’s command center. Photo documentation, scheduling and reporting tools give leadership a real-time view of progress, without having to visit every job site. General contractors are held to clear standards for uploading milestones and updates, helping to ensure transparency from the field to the front office.
Just as importantly, every stakeholder works within the same environment. That shared visibility has virtually eliminated the delays and errors that once came from scattered communication. “Before, everyone used a different platform,” Brown said. “Now, all of our teams can go into Procore and see information as they please, instead of waiting on a response or another link.”
The integration with SAP and Smartsheet strengthened the ecosystem even further. SAP provides after-the-fact financial reporting, while Procore delivers real-time insights. Smartsheet connects the development team’s planning data directly into the construction process. Together, the systems create a living record of each project — from design to delivery — without redundant data entry or disconnected reports.
Transforming data into strategic insight
For Brown, the true value of Procore is not operational –- it’s strategic. Through Procore’s financial tools, the company can now trace every change order to its source department, giving leaders a clear view of where cost changes originate and why. That transparency has made “lessons learned” a regular part of the construction process.
“When we finish a project,” Brown said, “we can look back at where change orders came from and ask: Do we need to update our prototype? Are we selecting the right vendors? How do we mitigate these costs next time?”
The insights also shape broader business decisions. Armed with reliable data on cost performance and project timelines, Pollo Campero’s leadership can determine whether to accelerate its growth plans, slow down or redirect capital to renovations and upgrades. “Procore Financials allows us to make strategic decisions in real time,” Brown said. “We can decide to be more aggressive with growth, pull something back or reinvest in existing stores.”
Automation further amplifies those benefits. Weekly project reports that once required hours of manual preparation are now delivered automatically, providing leadership with current information at their fingertips. That efficiency frees Brown and his team to focus on big-picture initiatives rather than busy work.
A unified platform for continuous improvement
With Procore as its foundation, Pollo Campero has reimagined construction as a core part of its growth strategy rather than a logistical hurdle. Every new restaurant now adds to a growing body of data that informs smarter forecasting, better partnerships and more confident expansion planning.
“Before Procore, we were managing projects,” Brown said. “Now, we’re managing our growth.”
