Portillo's hired Darden controller Kevin Kalicak as CFO with $825,000 in stock and a $50,000 sign-on bonus. The package's structure offers a benchmark for mid-cap restaurant CFO transitions.
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Portillo's hot dogs is poaching an executive from Darden Restaurants. Kevin Kalicak will join as CFO on April 28, replacing Michelle Hook, who resigned March 25 after roughly 17 months in the role.
The company awarded Kalicak 16,500 restricted stock units valued at roughly $825,000, according to a securities filing. That award vests in three equal annual installments starting May 2026. He also received a $50,000 sign-on bonus and gets a base salary of $500,000.
The compensation package lands at a moment when Portillo's is trying to hold margins against higher food and labor costs. Its restaurant-level EBITDA margin slipped to 22.4% last quarter from 25.3% a year earlier. A CFO swap mid-turnaround is risky, but Darden is one of the industry's best-run operators. Kalicak spent eight years there, most recently as senior vice president and controller for its 1,900-restaurant Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse chains.
Portillo's stock has been stuck near $11, down about 40% from its post-IPO high of $18.41 in late 2021. The company operates roughly 80 fast-casual restaurants in nine states, mostly in the Midwest and Florida. Same-store sales fell 6.2% in the latest quarter, hit by higher menu prices and shifts in consumer spending.
Hook's departure was disclosed in the same filing that detailed Kalicak's compensation. The outgoing CFO received a lump-sum severance of roughly $285,000 along with accelerated vesting of her outstanding equity awards. She will remain an adviser through late May.
Two other senior finance executives left Portillo's last year, creating what several analysts described as a thin bench in the finance function. The Darden hire partly addresses that concern, though Kalicak has never been a public-company CFO before.
For compensation consultants watching the package: the $825,000 equity grant equals about 1.7 times his $500,000 base salary, which is at the low end of the 1x-to-3x range typical for first-year CFO grants at mid-cap companies. The three-year cliff-less vesting is standard. The $50,000 sign-on bonus ranks below the $75,000-to-$150,000 range common for CFO transitions at companies of Portillo's size.
A compensation committee of the board approved the terms. The stock award and salary take effect April 28.
Portillo's has not set a date for its next quarterly report.
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