DAWN OF A PAD SITE CONGLOMERATE Luby’s Restaurants beat out the parent company of Freebirds World Burrito in an auction yesterday to purchase the bankrupt Fuddruckers hamburger chain. The $61 million purchase price includes 60 Fuddruckers locations and three Koo-Koo-Roos in Southern California. An additional 138 Fuddruckers restaurants are run by franchisees. Fuddruckers’ parent company had agreed in April to close 24 corporate-owned locations and terminate other leases. There are 17 Fuddruckers restaurants in the Houston area. [Houston Business Journal]
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Love KooKooRoo… bring the concept to Houston.
Fuddrucker’s is a big ole’ mess, and needed this. They have one thing going for them, though, their burger is the absolute best in the entire restaurant business (obviously personal opinion).
Otherwise, they are sitting on overpriced stand-alone real estate, running high labor, oversupplied high spoilage food (although personally I LOVE those tomatos and shredded lettuce one after another), and 5,000 square foot restaurants when they should be 2500-3200 sf.
I pray for their solid return, but they need to cut this fat out of their system, liquidate their awesome real estate, and reinvent themselves as a smaller, leaner operation with the best burger in the biz.