Roark Capital apparently isn’t done investing in restaurants.
The Atlanta-based private-equity firm has established a new fund, Roark Capital Partners VI, seeking to raise $5 billion, according to federal-securities documents. The filing comes less than a year after Roark closed on a $1.4 billion investment round.
The funding would give Roark more fuel to continue investing in restaurant chains as the industry emerges from the pandemic.
Roark has become one of the most aggressive and frequent buyers of restaurant chains, either on its own or through one of the multibrand concepts it controls—Arby’s owner Inspire Brands and Cinnabon-owner Focus Brands.
That aggressiveness was hardly slowed by the pandemic. Roark Capital made a notable $200 million investment in the publicly traded casual-dining operator Cheesecake Factory, for instance. Later in the year, it made its biggest splash yet, when Inspire Brands acquired Dunkin’ Brands in an $11.3 billion deal—the biggest in the industry in six years.
At the same time, the pandemic tested Roark’s traditional buy-and-hold strategy: The company sold Corner Bakery, the fast-casual bakery/cafe chain that was clearly struggling with problems in urban markets and weak breakfast sales.
Roark has historically sold a remarkably small number of restaurant chains. It took Wingstop public in 2015 and sold Il Fornaio last year just before the pandemic hit.
The new fundraise, $5 billion, equals the size of Roark’s last big effort that closed in 2018, shortly after the formation of Inspire Brands with the purchase of Buffalo Wild Wings by Arby’s.
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