Driving the restructuring and turnaround of a leading restaurant brand

The situation.

You’re an Italian restaurant brand inspired by country-side cuisine, with 85 casual dining restaurants in 22 states, plus 20 franchise locations in the US and seven other countries. You’re facing falling sales, increasing costs, and legacy liabilities. Your decline in performance results in negative $12M in EBITDA based on $230M in revenues prior to a Chapter 11 filing. You need help strategically turning around the brand and operations while concurrently working through a Chapter 11 reorganization.

We get to work.

We serve as your interim CEO and CRO to develop a turnaround plan focused on a combination of initiatives across sales and marketing, cost management (unit level and G&A), real estate, team development and retention, and controls and processes establishment. Additionally, we:​

• Strategize around efforts to reverse the declining trend in same-store sales. ​
• Support an accelerated bankruptcy process over just four months, enabling the aggressive renegotiation of leases and vendor contacts.​
• Manage the Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding (managing a DIP cash flow forecast).​
• Lead the development and system-wide rollout of new labor forecasting and food and beverage costing systems.​
• Rationalize the geographical footprint.

The work pays off.

Your brand is successfully turned around while concurrently working through a Chapter 11 reorganization. Specifically, your company returns to EBITDA positive and you realize consistent improvement and reach the first-ever positive YOY growth under current ownership. You renegotiate leases and contracts for an annualized P&L savings of $2.3M and secure new financing of $13.5M to fund both the restructuring costs and the operational turnaround. On top of all that, you see a P&L savings of more than $5M annually through new forecasting and costing initiatives and close more than 40 negative carry units to yield $5M of incremental EBITDA annually.