The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • E6

E6 PALMBEACHP0ST.COM I REAL NEWS STARTS HERE THE PALM BEACH POST (561) 820-4343 I SATURDAY, MAY 21, 2016 RESTAURANT INDUSTRY For L.A.'s Porto's, volume is secret to success Betty Porto (center) is one of three siblings who runs Porto's Bakery Cafe, which was started by her Cuban immigrant parents. She's surrounded by staff at Porto's Glendale, location, irfan khan los angeles times Bakery chain's long lines mean firm can keep prices down. By David Pierson Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES When picking up a box of cheese rolls, potato balls or a cake at Porto's Bakery Cafe, two things are always guaranteed: The lines will be long and the food affordable. There cannot be one without the other. Porto's, a Southern California mainstay responsible for catering generations of family parties, birthdays and quinceaneras, attracts hordes of customers by selling pastries that cost about $1 but taste like you paid more.

But to make a profit, Porto's needs to sell a lot of those pastries. How many? In March, the chain dished out nearly 520,000 potato balls and more than a million cheese rolls in its three locations, all in the Los Angeles area, combined. "If we don't have the volume, we have to raise prices," said Betty Porto, 57, one of three siblings who run the family business founded by their Cuban emigre parents. That willingness to embrace the crowds is a chief reason the bakery has thrived for four decades, fending off national chains, recessions and low-carb fads along the way. But there also comes a point when the lines get too long and begin driving customers away.

That's why the family is expanding once again, preparing to open its first new store since 2010 later this year before adding another one in 2017. Each new bakery typically reduces crowds at existing stores about 7 percent, Porto said. Expanding also helps keep costs down. The bigger the business gets, the easier it is to demand lower prices for ingredients. The chain is such a huge buyer of flour, sugar, eggs, butter and fruit that it can also cut deals with its suppliers to deliver daily.

That lowers storage costs and reduces the likelihood that inventory will spoil and go to waste. The chain is such a huge buyer of flour, sugar, eggs, butter and fruit that it can cut deals for daily supply. business' only location until the family opened its second store in Burbank in 2005. Five years later, Porto's opened its third location in Downey. The next generation of children is already being groomed to take over the pastry empire.

Two are already working at the business. Betty Porto and her siblings are encouraging the others to work somewhere else first before potentially joining Porto's. "We want them to work somewhere else so they know there's a chain of command everywhere you go," said Betty Porto, who has a master's degree in political science from UCLA and was aiming to become a lawyer before deciding to join the family business. "You can't just come here and be successful without having the right tools because everyone will be looking at them for leadership." Transitioning a family business to the next generation isn't easy, said Ken Ude, director of the USC Marshall Family Business Program. Only 30 percent of family-run companies make it as far as Porto's has, handing off a business from the first generation to the second.

Only 12 percent make it to third generation and less than 5 percent make it to the fourth generation. "It gets more complicated from one generation to the next," Ude said. "It's not always like Porto's, where the kids see how hard their parents work and choose to work just as hard." "It's a hell of a brand with scrappy customer service," he added. "Clearly they're all on the same page." The rise of national chains like Panera Bread, Corner Bakery Cafe and Au Bon Pain doesn't faze Betty Porto. Those brands serve a niche, she said, but they don't come close to having the tradition that Porto's commands with the families that have braved the lines for years.

"You come to Porto's, I can make a cake for your child's first birthday, her Communion, her baptism and her quinceanera," she said. "I can marry her off and then the next generation starts." the Freedom Flights. Miami was already saturated with Cuban immigrants, so the family was sent to L. A. penniless and in need of work.

Raul Porto got a job as a janitor at a Van de Kamp Bakery. Rosa Porto started baking cakes for fellow Cubans and neighbors in L. A. Demand grew so much and space was so limited at home that the kids' beds had to be covered in tablecloths for makeshift counter space. "My mother would flip cakes all night so we couldn't go to bed," Betty Porto said.

In 1976 and with a $5,000 loan, the family opened its first storefront, a 300-square-foot bakery in a strip mall. There are several items that put Porto's on the map: meringue-frosted Cuban cake, meat pies, chicken empanadas, potato balls, ham croquettes and guava and cheese pies. But given L.A.'s diversity, the family began expanding the menu to include Mexican treats and European desserts. "We were getting Filipino, Mexican and Salvadoran customers," Betty Porto said. "We were running out of space." In 1982, Porto's moved to Glendale.

That was the "I'll eat anything here," Felicite Paz, 64, said over a plate with chicken pie, a potato ball and an empanada. Jose Pose and his wife Adela are just as dedicated customers. "This place is like religion for us," said Jose Pose, 74, a retiree who had his daughter's wedding cake made at Porto's. "We come here once a week like church." The food at Porto's is based on the favorites family members grew up eating in Cuba before their lives were upended by the rule of Fidel Castro. Betty Porto's mother, Rosa Porto, lost her job as a manager at a cigar distributor.

Her father, Raul Porto, was sent to a labor camp. The family survived by baking cakes and selling them through word of mouth. Customers had to share their rations for eggs and sugar to make the desserts. They paid by bartering chickens or beans. Out of Cuba After being wait-listed for eight years, the Porto family left its hometown of Man-zanillo for the U.S.

in 1971 under a program known as labor because that's going to cost you money and who's going to pay for that? The customers." The family won't disclose revenue at the private business, but says growth has been steady. That's why Porto's is expanding and considering selling frozen pastries online to reach fans who live out of state or those unwilling to wait in line for a bite. It's not just long lines the family is sensitive about. In car-centric LA, parking remains one of the biggest challenges for the business. The bakery benefits from several city parking structures in Glendale, but it has no such luxury in Burbank.

So Porto's bought the building next door to its bakery just for its allotted parking spaces. In Downey, the family built a multi-story garage. That's important for regulars like Felicite Paz and her husband, Jorge, who drive an hour once a week from their home to eat lunch at Porto's in Glendale. "We don't buy flour bags, we buy flour by the truckful, said Porto, a rosy-cheeked mother of two college-aged children who often has to wear a back brace to account for the hours she spends on her feet in her family's bakeries. Visits like 'church' Porto's has grown into an amalgamation of a mom-and-pop business and a finely tuned corporate chain like the Cheesecake Factory.

The family hired a consultant years ago to calibrate its business operations. It installed greeters with earpieces and walkie-talkies to direct customers to the correct lines. And the chain's nearly 1,000 employees are deployed using software that projects sales in 30-minute intervals so that managers know how many workers they need. "If you need two people for a job, then you only use two people," Porto said. "You don't go around wasting APPLICATIONS App-makers draw a fans of adult coloring books Long Beach, resident Cheri Brown shows how easy it is to touch the screen using the coloring app Recolor on her iPad Mini to create handmade, photo-quality images that resemble coloring-book pictures, mark boster los angeles times tns bead on Amazon.com plans to open hundreds of bookstores and why many online shopping startups now rent mall space.

The colorist community is falling in line. "There is a place for physical books," said Ilkka Teppo, 40, chief executive and founder of Sumoing, the Helsinki, Finland, startup behind Recolor. "You can much more easily try color combinations and styles on digital, then when you have more time, you can have the experience on print." Business strategists agree books and apps can coexist. But it's not certain that every industry searching for physical-digital harmonies can escape the infamous decline that Napster, iTunes and Spotify unleashed on music companies. "They can have a happy medium," said Elizabeth Spaulding, leader of man After trying 20 of the 450 coloring apps, she settled on Recolor, paying a $40 annual subscription.

It's best, she says, because you can erase by touch, quickly access recently used colors and color virtual 3-D objects. She expects Recolor to add better effects, which can make a drawing look like it's on canvas or other materials. Pens and crayons cost hundreds of dollars. She spends less these days, occasionally splurging on 99-cent addons from third-party apps like Lumiere that animate Recolor drawings: Say putting shooting stars on an evening landscape. Brown hasn't ditched books; she recently bought five because she wants to finish her coloring supplies.

But she'll use her iPad camera to scan most pages into Recolor for digital alteration instead. Debra Matsumoto, a spokeswoman for Laurence King Publishing, which has sold 16 million art-book copies since 2013, acknowledged that heightened competition hurts sales. But the firm anticipates an enduring, sizable audience that "purposely seeks a very non-digital experience," Matsumoto said. Count among them Shelly Durham, who runs the website Adult Coloring Book Reviews. "Using a coloring app and saying you created art is like putting a TV dinner in the microwave and saying you cooked," she said.

"They will never be the same." Laurence King is out to prove it. One new book has gum binding for easy tearing and framing of pages. Another is a flipbook-style story, and a third has an accordion-like layout that unwinds 15 feet. Apps maintain separate tactics to outlast and buoy books. Recolor is talking to publishers, advertisers and entertainment giants about constantly introducing the latest hot characters and themes into its app since digital rollouts can be fast.

"There will be major synergistic deals cut between intellectual property holders, booksellers and app vendors over the next 12 months," Teppo said.) Teppo's six-man team pursued Recolor almost a year ago after realizing three had wives hooked on coloring books. Smartphones, where tapping to insert a swatch of color could replace scribbling between lines, promised to make the art form easier. They launched in August. About 80 percent of users are women or their children. Women tend to love puzzle games like "Candy Crush," but coloring provides the satisfaction of creation, Teppo said.

Others describe coloring as a way to relieve stress. That's partially the case with Brown. But entertainment is key, because she lacks options as a homebound caregiver. She's forged friendships with app-colorists from Japan to Poland she discovered on the popular image-sharing app Instagram. But Brown avoids the "condescending" book-only col-orists, she says.

"You'll always have artists that think the only way to be an artist is to pull out their coloring set," she said. "My heart is in the digital end of things." By Paresh Dave Los Angeles Times LOS ANG ELES Since she got in on the adult coloring book craze two years ago, Cheri Brown has spent more than $400 on 50 books holding intricate sketches that she embellishes with Sharpies, colored pencils and gel pens. But in November, Brown shifted spending to digital products. She paid $100 for mobile apps including Recolor and Colorfy, which Comscore researchers say together reached 2.3 million users in the U.S. in March, less than 10 months after launching.

Brown, who crisscrossed the world as a diver for 30 years, now relaxes at home in the Los Angeles area. Eight hours a day, usually settled in an armchair or curled in bed, she pecks with her right index finger at an iPad Mini, lighting its screen with the blues, greens and silvers of the sea. Brown, 63, even plans to pay upward of $700 for a stylus and an iPad Pro. It stores more artwork, boasts a bigger screen and offers greater precision. "If I had $100 to spend on coloring, I'd be more likely to buy into a really good app than buy coloring books," she said.

"You see where my purchases are starting to go." The brisk rise of coloring apps threatens the enormous growth of coloring book publishers, who sold 12 million adult and children's coloring books in the U.S. last year percent more than in 2014, according to tracking firm Nielsen. Coloring book enthusiasts insist they'd never abandon agement consulting firm Bain digital practice. But "simply waiting for it to play out is not a good answer." With coloring books, Brown's move to digital offers one prediction of the future. A friend's Facebook post about coloring apps and the tediousness of books inspired her digital transition.

Brown carried a big tote with pencils and books when taking her infirm mother to long doctor's visits. Now, she slips the iPad into her purse. Coloring a page takes days. So she's colored only 150 pages vs. 300 digital creations in one-third the time.

On screen, she colors three insect sketches during a doctor's appointment, mainly because elements like shading are instantaneous. "With a touch of a finger, you've got it perfectly done polished and smooth," she said. the pad and paper. But the concern is that, like Brown, people will become accustomed to the on-demand, dynamic enchantment of apps and ditch the old medium. That's what has happened as other throwback trends enjoy revivals for instance how young adults subscribe to Netflix, not cable, to watch Nickelodeon shows from their past.

The issue reflects a spreading realization: It's dangerous for companies entrenched in making physical products or selling goods at bricks-and-mortar shops to not fight for online spending and vice versa. That explains why popular publisher Blue Star Coloring has found a partner to develop a coloring app, why movie studios are hawking apps filled with games and extra content, why rumors suggest online retail giant.