Campero USA, the U.S. arm of the Latin American Pollo Campero restaurant chain, announced plans Wednesday to open restaurants inside Wal-Mart stores.

The move is expected to help the retailing giant boost its appeal to Latino consumers and to allow Pollo Campero, which has its U.S. headquarters in Dallas, to expand by spending less than freestanding sites would cost.

The chain specializing in chicken served fried or grilled was launched in Guatemala in 1971, and it has 260 restaurants worldwide, the company said. All but one of its 36 U.S. locations are owned by franchisees, according to the company.

Two restaurants s are scheduled to open next year inside Chicago-area Wal-Mart stores. Another Pollo Campero is set to open later in the year at a store about 15 minutes from Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., said Rodolfo Jimenez, executive vice president of Campero USA.

He said there have been no discussions yet about the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and he gave no estimate of how many restaurants eventually will be located within Wal-Mart walls.

Most of the 2,300 supercenters operated by Wal-Mart in the U.S. contain restaurants.

"They have a successful formula, and we believe our customers would very much embrace offerings from this company," Linda Brown Blakley, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., said about the Pollo Campero deal.

Mr. Jimenez said most of the restaurants opening in Wal-Marts are likely to be owned by Campero USA, not franchisees.

The Wal-Mart restaurants will be smaller than normal, with less staff, and will not need a big marketing campaign to attract customers, he said.

The Subway sandwich chain and McDonald's also have sites in Wal-Marts, which provides a pool of customers, many of them Latino. In addition, about 12 percent of Wal-Mart's 1.3 million U.S. workers are Latino, Ms. Brown Blakley said.

"They want to have Pollo Campero in their stores," Mr. Jimenez said. "They have a lot of Hispanic customers. They believe that having a Latin American concept in the stores would be good for the brand."

Overall, Pollo Campero hopes to open 500 restaurants in the U.S. by 2012, not counting the Wal-Mart locations.