BROOMFIELD - Noodles & Co., a privately owned restaurant chain headquartered in Broomfield, has opened its 300th restaurant, the company announced this week.

Noodles, a fast-casual restaurant chain that specializes in noodle dishes from a variety of ethnic cuisines, has tripled in size in the past seven years and posted positive same-store sales in 25 of the past 26 quarters, according to the company.

Noodles has been expanding the number of restaurants in its system by 13 to 15 percent a year for the past several years, director of communications Jill Preston said. Another 25 stores are planned to be opened by the end of the year, she said.

Noodles has restaurants in 23 states. The company owns 255 of the restaurants, Preston said. Noodles is working with a few new franchisees, but it plans to continue to have the same proportion of corporate-owned stores.

"We're restaurant operators at heart. We enjoy running restaurants and coming into new markets," Preston said.  

The majority owner of Noodles is Catterton Partners, a $2.5 billion private equity firm based in Greenwich, Conn. The firm acquired its stake in Noodles in December 2010.  

Noodles employs about 90 at its Broomfield headquarters and has about 6,500 employees nationwide.

Noodles was founded in Denver in 1995 and was headquartered in Boulder for several years before moving to Broomfield. The 300th location is in Waterloo, Iowa.