Roark Capital Group http://www.roarkcapital.com/invest_philosophy.php hasn’t been shy about spreading the wealth among growth-oriented restaurant companies. Until this year. The Atlanta-based private equity firm, which controls several fast-growing chains, hasn’t done a restaurant deal in 2009. We asked Managing Director Steve Romaniello to explain why and to tell us when he expects Roark to return to investing in the restaurant space.
Roark has done several transactions recently, yet none in the restaurant space. Why not?
We continue to be active in our pursuit in this space. But we have not seen the deal flow shake out quite yet. We hope to be much more active and substantially increase our restaurant holdings in 2010.Are you still looking at franchise models?
We like franchising. That’s an expertise of the firm, in general. But we love restaurants and have gone pretty far down the road with large multiunit franchises. So we like both sides of the equation: franchisor and franchisee.