Dive Brief:
- Delight Restaurant Group acquired 65 Wendy’s restaurants in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia from Primary Aim, the company said Tuesday in a press release.
- This acquisition makes Delight one of the largest Wendy’s franchisees, with 226 restaurants generating $500 million in sales across eight states.
- Delight said it would continue growing its unit count with additional acquisitions and new unit development.
Dive Insight:
Delight Restaurant Group, founded by managing partners Andrew and Richard Krumholz in 2016, previously acquired nearly 100 Wendy’s restaurants in 2021. That year, it grew its presence in Raleigh, North Carolina, after buying 54 units from bankrupt NPC International and in Long Island, New York, with the purchase of 44 units from Wendy’s. Delight previously said it would remodel these restaurants and add more restaurants in these markets.
Delights’ plans to grow its unit count through new development fits within Wendy’s overall growth strategy. Wendy’s has been working with new and existing franchisees to accelerate global unit growth to over 2% in 2024 and to 3% to 4% by 2025, Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner said during the company’s Q4 earnings call.
The company boosted its franchise recruitment efforts with various incentive programs and signed hundreds of new restaurant commitments and approved 70 new franchisees over the past two years, he said. Flynn Group, which operates over 190 Wendy’s restaurants, signed a master franchise agreement last year to develop 200 restaurants in Australia through 2034.
