Chick-fil-A, Inc. reported record revenue and earnings in 2020, despite the Covid-19 pandemic. The Atlanta-based quick-serve operator, ranked by Franchise Times Magazine as the 9th largest franchise company in the United States, reported record free-standing franchised restaurant sales as it… Read more >>

I finally got around to watching “From Poor to CEO: The Incredible Journey of Herman Cain.” Released shortly after the former restaurant executive’s untimely death last July, the hour-long documentary traces Cain’s rise from working- class roots to corporate executive, presidential candidate… Read more >>

Neil Blazin, owner and co-founder of Pittsburgh-based Driftwood Oven, is a crowdfunding veteran. In 2017 he raised more than $40,000 on Kickstarter to move his mobile pizza oven and bakery into a brick-and-mortar location, and in 2020, his regulation crowdfunding campaign on Honeycomb Credit… Read more >>

If you believe the hype, virtual restaurants are a savior for existing restaurants struggling to turn a profit or looking to monetize excess kitchen capacity. For the countless operators now buying into virtual concepts from existing restaurant players, well-capitalized technology brands or … Read more >>

Brian Geraghty learned early that if you kept your head down and did your homework, it kept you out of Mom’s line of sight. “She had a rule: If you weren’t doing schoolwork or at your part-time job, she’d put you to work around the house,” he said. Read more >>

The November bankruptcy filing of CBL Properties, the large mall and shopping center REIT, echoes a dreary sentiment for malls, shopping centers and retailers since Covid came on the scene in March. The burgeoning trend toward e-commerce, accelerated by the pandemic, crushed brick-and-mortar… Read more >>

The Economic Aid to Hard-Hit Small Businesses, Nonprofits, and Venues Act was enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Trump. $900 billion of COVID relief includes round two of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan program.  $284 billion has been set aside for PPP-2, called … Read more >>

Crowdfunding has become a popular way of using the internet to raise small amounts of money for both profit and non-profit purposes. As its popularity has grown, it has become an effective way for entrepreneurs, including restaurants, to raise serious start-up capital. Read more >>

Despite the havoc of the pandemic, restaurant dealmakers remain positive about the future. To be sure, many of 2020’s transactions — including last year’s $11.3 billion Dunkin’ Brands acquisition by Inspire Brands—were in the works ahead of the March shutdown, easing their completion.  Read more >>

ChutneyMex made attendees hungry and captured the win, in the first competition in which teams from four leading hospitality universities worked to "Redesign the Restaurant of the Future," presented during Restaurant Finance Week November 12. Read more >>

Franchise Times Magazine and the Restaurant Finance Monitor have announced the launch of their virtual forum, Restaurant Finance Week, to be held November 9-13, 2020.  Read more >>

It has been widely reported that Inspire Brands, controlled by private equity firm, Roark Capital, is negotiating to buy Dunkin’ Brands (DNKN) for about $11 billion, including approximately $3 billion of debt. This amounts to about 22x EBITDA in calendar 2019, and the same multiple of consen… Read more >>

The pandemic has offered restaurants a much-needed reset button. For years progressive restaurateurs, especially those in fine dining, have been looking for a way to make the industry into a “real” profession, while also finding a way to even out the inequities in pay between the servers in … Read more >>

President Trump’s executive order on August 8, 2020, directing the Treasury Department to allow companies to defer an employee’s payroll taxes from September through the end of the year, came with plenty of political bluster, but no real guidelines for employers. On August 29, the Treasury D… Read more >>

Wintrust Bank CEO Ed Wehmer recalled his dad asking him in high school, “What’re you going to do for your career? Why don’t you be a CPA and then you can go around and ask any questions you want about all sorts of businesses?”  Read more >>