Dive Brief:
- Pizza Hut has purchased 18 stores from franchisee EYM Pizza in Georgia, Illinois and Wisconsin at a bankruptcy auction for EYM Pizza’s 77 stores in operation as of January 2025, court records show.
- Five other bidders acquired the remainder of EYM’s stores in those states and in South Carolina. Aside from Pizza Hut, operator PZH Foods bought 21 stores; KK MGMT bought 20; Valor Pizza acquired seven; PH Hospitality Group bid successfully for six; and Shantilal Patel came away with five.
- In total, the bidders other than Pizza Hut paid about $11.1 million for the stores, or about $180,000 per store. Pizza Hut’s bids totaled $720,000, or $40,000 per store.
Dive Insight:
This buyout more than doubles Pizza Hut’s company-operated store count. The chain is heavily franchised — as of Sept. 30, 2024, Pizza Hut operated seven company-owned units, per Yum Brans’ 10-Q.
In September, EYM said it would sell 127 of its Pizza Hut restaurants through the Chapter 11 process, meaning many of its locations have likely closed in the interim. Local media in markets where EYM operated have reported many of the franchisee’s Pizza Huts have shut down. EYM ran about 140 stores when it filed for bankruptcy in July.
According to Yum’s most recent quarterly report, about one-third of Pizza Hut’s 19,927 stores are located in the U.S., or about 6,575 restaurants. EYM’s bankruptcy may have resulted in the closure of almost a full percentage point of Pizza Hut’s U.S. system.
It’s not uncommon for franchisors to snap up some portion of a bankrupt operator’s holdings: Burger King bought 17 restaurants when Toms King’s assets were auctioned, and purchased 32 units from Meridian Restaurants Unlimited during that operator’s bankruptcy.
