Lucio bounces back in entrepreneurial fashion

Entrepreneurs know about setbacks. Louis Lucio, who founded The Armadillo restaurant chain, knows all about being an entrepreneur.

He took over his parents’ pool hall, The Armadillo Club in LaSalle, in 1972, used his grandmother’s Mexican recipes to focus on the dining side of the business, then opened the Fort Collins location in 1979. Lucio saw his chain take off, growing to a $20 million business with 17 units along the Front Range by the time he was named a Bravo! Entrepreneur in 1999.

Then the growth and the national economy caught up with the company, and it filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2001.

By 2005, all $8 million owed to creditors, vendors and the Internal Revenue Service had been paid back “100 percent, no discounts,” Lucio said recently. The number of locations has been trimmed to 10, including restaurants in Greeley, Fort Collins and Longmont.

Lucio is still president of the company, now known as Armadillo Border Grill & Cantina and headquartered in Northglenn. He said he is focusing his efforts now on “remodeling, reshaping and redistributing” the Armadillo concept to better compete in the company’s extremely competitive niche of the restaurant market.

The rising price of gasoline, which translates into higher prices for food as well as discouraging customers from dining out, isn’t helping.

“We have lots of options on the table right now,” Lucio said. “I’m concentrating on finding the right combination of fast-food concept, franchising, and selling off some of the parts to a new company.”

That’s another thing entrepreneurs understand.

“That’s what business is all about – nothing can stay the same,” he said.

Lucio said his main focus is on recruiting the right people to take over so he can retire and travel the world. “I don’t want to wait until I’m 80.”

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