El Pollo Loco Holdings, Inc.

Shareholders and Board of Directors

El Pollo Loco Holdings, Inc.

Opinion on the Consolidated Financial Statements

We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of El Pollo Loco Holdings, Inc. (the “Company”) as of December 31, 2025 and December 25, 2024, the related consolidated statements of income, comprehensive income, changes in stockholders’ equity, and cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2025, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the “consolidated financial statements”). In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company at December 31, 2025 and December 25, 2024, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2025, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

We also have audited, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (“PCAOB”), the Company's internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2025, based on criteria established inInternal Control – Integrated Framework**(2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (“COSO”) and our report dated March 13, 2026 expressed an unqualified opinion thereon.

Basis for Opinion

These consolidated financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s consolidated financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the PCAOB and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the consolidated financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud.

Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the consolidated financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the consolidated financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the consolidated financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of the critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the consolidated financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Estimation of workers’ compensation liabilities

As discussed in Note 2 to the consolidated financial statements, the Company accrued $10.3 million of workers’ compensation reserves in accrued insurance as of December 31, 2025. The Company maintains a reserve for estimated claims both reported and incurred but not reported. Significant assumptions in the estimate included loss development factors, expected loss rates, and weighting of methods.

We identified the evaluation of certain methods and assumptions used in the estimation of the underlying workers’ compensation reserves as a critical audit matter. Specifically, the estimation was subject to inherent uncertainty and required especially subjective auditor judgment, including the involvement of actuarial professionals with specialized skills and knowledge to evaluate certain methods and assumptions including loss development factors, and expected loss rates.

The primary procedures we performed to address this critical audit matter included:

/s/BDO USA, P.C.

We have served as the Company’s auditor since 2011.

March 13, 2026