Can Restaurants Come Back Stronger than Ever?
The cost of reimaging an existing location can be very costly$250,000 up to $1 million or more per location. Developing a new store can cost upward of $2 million. Older, legacy franchisees look at the amount of money required and must decide if they have the energy and time to recoup this new investment. Add to this mix that, in many cases, the legacy owners children are not interested in the family business. And finally, there has been a substantial increase in the multiples being paid to obtain existing stores. Larger, well financed franchise operators are fighting each other for the chance to expand quickly. This can be accomplished by buying older legacy operator locations. Add all of this up and there exists a perfect storm exit strategy for older, legacy franchise operators that allows them to reap the rewards of their many years of hard work. Larger, well financed operators are taking over the fast-food model. Franchisees that want to buy out existing operators are being approved by franchisors, but part of the cost is a requirement to sign a development agreement. These development agreements require the acquiring operator to agree to develop more stores within certain designated areas within certain periods of time. Vacated real estate left behind by failing operators will be quickly repurposed into new restaurants to satisfy the development agreements that the large franchise operators were cajoled into signing. The issue I see most often with private equity financing is a lack of goal alignment between the ownership parties. Private equity likes quick serve restaurants. Or rather, they like the large cash flow generated by quick serve restaurants that they see as a source of leveraging. The more cash generated, the more credit that is potentially available to the business to borrow and ultimately use to buy them out. The typical private equity firm want to be in and out of the business within 4-7 years. The owner/operator, on the other hand, looks at the business as its long-term cash cow. They want to run the business indefinitely. Thus, the disconnect. The private equity firm wants out in the short term while the owner/operator is in the business for the long term. And there lies the problem. The private equity player forces the owner/operator to buy it out at a substantial profit using the borrowed funds resulting in the business being over levered and a perfect candidate for failure when the market has a downturn and it no longer has cash or the ability to borrow to sustain itself. It is forced to sell. Enter the family office. Family offices are, by their nature, typically long term money. Family offices usually are looking for investments that pay yields over a long period of time. This allows for the goal alignment that is lacking with private equity. I believe that family offices will become a good source of funding for quick serve restaurants moving forward. The world collapsed in 2008 and again in 2020. However, in 2008 the financial system collapsed causing major disruptions to business and consumers alike. In 2020 that is not the case. To the contrary. Financial institutions were much stronger going into 2020 than 2008, partly as a result of legislation that was enacted after 2008 forcing financial institutions to carry more reserves and take other conservative measures to ensure they would not collapse in a future calamity. In 2020, governments around the globe created instant and substantial liquidity to their economies and at the same time doled out money to support their consumers. As a result, consumers have substantial accumulated wealth and have decreased their debt. Add in the pent-up demand of having nothing much to do or spend on over the past year and the result is a booming economy. Operators are looking to acquire existing restaurants and build new locations. This is pushing up the price of existing stores. Since quick-service has held up so well during the pandemic, the value of its real estate has increased, particularly to 1031 buyers who are concerned that the tax laws are going to change increasing capital gains and perhaps eliminating the Section 1031 exchange vehicle. This is increasing the cost to acquire and develop new stores further eroding the ability of smaller operators to compete. Millennials like convenience. Quick-serve, while fast, is not as convenient as quick-serve plus delivery of the food to their door. GrubHub, Door Dash, Uber Eats and others all are trying to find a model to address this want. Problem is, no one has yet found a way to make money at it. A possible solution is centralized kitchens. Most of the delivery services go to a specific restaurant and pick up a specific order and deliver to a specific house. Then they do it again. Someone must pay for this serviceeither the restaurant or the customer or a combination of the two. The problem is that the cost of this very personalized service is expensive, too expensive for the restaurants who cannot easily pass the cost back to the customer and too expensive for the customer who does not want pay a delivery charge equal to or close to the cost of the meal. With a centralized kitchenwhich is a single location that houses multiple food concepts kitchens, a driver for one of the delivery services can go to one location and pick up several meals from different restaurants for different customers at the same time. This is a huge time saver for the delivery service as it allows them to make only one stop at the centralized kitchen to serve multiple customers, thus reducing the delivery cost. I would not classify it as unfair competition since anyone could open a centralized kitchen and anyone could rent space at the centralized kitchen (provided the franchisor agrees). Encroachment, that is another issue. Franchisees are very sensitive to the same restaurant concept opening too close to its existing location. If franchisors allow operators of a central kitchen location to sell to a market where there is already an established, full restaurant that is owned and operated by someone else, I guarantee there will be claims for encroachment. In addition, it is probably very feasible for a centralized kitchen to be able to service areas much broader than the usual protected area granted to a particular restaurant. So, a centralized kitchen could theoretically encroach on more than one operator. I suspect this is an issue that will ultimately be resolved as franchise concepts figure out how to add this delivery service to its menu of options. Prior to COVID, drive-thru was about 70 percent of gross sales for quick-service. During COVID, drive-thru plus online ordering plus delivery were 100 percent of gross sales. I expect these trends to all increase over pre-COVID. Dining room traffic will continue to fall as a percentage of gross sales. The other trend that started pre-COVID and will continue is that large owner/operators will be the winners with smaller and mom and pops fading from the scene. Large operators have access to capital which allows them to obtain and buyout smaller players as well as develop new locations. This is being facilitated by the franchisors who are favoring the larger operators. Andrew W. Lapin is a Partner with Robbins, Salomon & Patt, LTD. and has over 35 years of experience practicing in the areas of real estate, business franchise, business transactions, banking & finance, and labor & employment. His clients include entrepreneurial business owners, franchise owner/operators, real estate investors, developers and syndicators. Andy also represents banks and other financial institutions in lending and loan workouts and restructurings; as well as in syndicated, single bank, secured, unsecured, structured finance, real estate, commercial and industrial, private bank and asset-based lending transactions.