Salad chain Chopt in January purchased Dos Toros Taqueria in a deal designed to enforce the two fast-casual brands and share best practices in a competitive marketplace.
"At Chopt, we've invested heavily over the course of the past five years in consumer-facing assets to make the salad buying experience as convenient as possible," Chopt CEO Nick Marsh told Cheddar. "We'll be able to bring all of that investment over to Dos Toros very swiftly."
The New York City-based companies will join under a new parent company called Founders Table Restaurant Group, but they will maintain their separate brand identities.
"We believe these are great brands in and of themselves, so the focus is not on doing anything too hodgepodge," said Marsh, who will take over leadership of the combined company.
The companies share a similar origin story. They opened their first storefronts near Manhattan's Union Square — a veritable mecca for fast-casual restaurants looking to feed hungry office workers and build up their brand identities in New York City's accelerated marketplace.
One of the first initiatives of the restaurant group will be to expand Dos Toros into the same East Coast footprint as Chopt. The salad chain now operates 66 locations in eight states, and Dos Toros has 21 locations in three states.
"As we grow, we want to bring Dos Toros where Chopt is already established," Marsh said.
That doesn't mean the kind of hybrid restaurants common at gas stations and rest stops, but Marsh said there could be a duel loyalty program.
Both brands have made strides to diversify their business models to keep up with the competition. Chopt in November opened a pickup- and delivery-only restaurant to meet the rising demand in digital orders, which make up 40 percent of the business. Dos Toros has grown its catering business to 10 percent of sales.
"Both of these restaurants are profitable and have been profitable for a very long time," Marsh said. He added that the companies' combined annual revenues are $300 million.
The push to offer expanded delivery and off-premise services has impacted the entire industry. As in-store sales have weakened, fast-casual has seen the biggest jump in delivery sales, according to industry data from Black Box Intelligence.
The monthly average of delivery sales increased from 10.3 percent in August 2018 to 28 percent in August 2019. That's compared to a 7 percent increase for the whole food industry.
The fast-casual segment is increasingly competitive and dominated by major players such as Chipotle, with its 2,500 stores and $4.8 billion in revenues.
Other mid-sized companies have turned to acquisitions as well to keep pace. Chopt rival Sweetgreen in June purchased meal delivery company Galley Foods in Washington, DC. The acquisition gives Sweetgreen access to new expertise in logistics and food storage.
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
