You don’t have to actually go to Vancouver, Canada any longer if you were dead-set on trying the company’s newly acquired Bread Garden. Come 2009, you’ll be able to experience the restaurant if you have a layover or a plane change at Vancouver’s airport. The great part for the company is that you’ll be joining the 18 million other people who pass through Vancouver airport every year. That’s a lot of foot traffic.

There aren’t a lot of details yet, other than the square footage, location, and the estimated open date of what will be the twelfth Bread Garden. However, airport restaurants tend to do quite well. A unique concept like a Bread Garden Urban Cafe stands to do even better than average.

In the bigger picture, we find it more than a little interesting that this micro cap company has once again found a way to grow by expanding somewhere there’s not a painful recession. On the contrary - Vancouver is thriving. Presumably anybody traveling to, from, or through Vancouver is also doing reasonably well in terms of consumerism.

A game changer? We won’t go that far. There were already 11 Bread Gardens, and there were a total 53 restaurants in the Spicy Pickle (SPKL) family not counting the new one underway at the Vancouver airport. However, every company-owned unit can have a solid impact on the top and bottom line when it comes to a micro cap company like Spicy Pickle.

More specifically, every company-owned unit means much better (relative) cash flow, as there are less than 20 company-owned stores. The rest are franchises. And, owning a unit rather than franchising it gives the corporation a chance at stronger bottom-line earnings than a franchise might produce.

The stock itself remains a frustration, though we attribute the majority of its weakness to the bear market - not the company’s performance.

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