The large private-equity firm that has $42 bllion in assets has made 335 investments in companies worldwide since 1989. Its presence in the restaurant space, however, had been relatively modest until last year. Over the summer, Advent acquired the breakfast chain First Watch.
That acquisition was its first purchase of a restaurant since its buyout of The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in 2013. Before that, the company had acquired the Charlotte, N.C.-based chicken chain Bojangles’, which it took public in 2015.
The First Watch deal, however, gave Advent a growth chain that’s capitalizing on the all-day breakfast trend. It’s a family-forward concept that has been growing through a combination of word-of-mouth popularity and acquisitions of competing breakfast-and-lunch-only brands.