El Pollo Loco Holdings, Inc.

Disclosure Controls and Procedures

We maintain disclosure controls and procedures (as such term is defined in Rule 13a-15(e) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”)) that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by us in the reports that we file or submit under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the SEC’s rules and forms and that such information is accumulated and communicated to our management, including our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, as appropriate to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.

Our disclosure controls and procedures are based on assumptions about the likelihood of future events, and even effective disclosure controls and procedures can only provide reasonable assurance of achieving their objectives. Because of their inherent limitations, we cannot guarantee that our disclosure controls and procedures will succeed in achieving their stated objectives in all cases, that they will be complied with in all cases, or that they will prevent or detect all misstatements.

Our management has evaluated, with the participation of our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures, as of the end of the period covered by this report. Based on this evaluation, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were effective, at the reasonable assurance level, as of September 30, 2026.

Changes in Internal Control over Financial Reporting

During the quarter ended September 30, 2026, we completed the implementation of a new enterprise resource planning (“ERP”) system, which has replaced our legacy ERP system. As a result, we modified certain existing controls and implemented new controls. We will continue to monitor and evaluate the operating effectiveness of the related controls during subsequent periods. With the exception of these changes, there were no other changes in our internal control over financial reporting during the quarter ended September 30, 2026 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.