Famous Dave’s Parent Company Inks $13.5M Deal to Buy Bakers Square, Village Inn
Minnetonka-based BBQ Holdings, owner of the Famous Dave’s restaurant chain, on Friday announced that it has reached a $13.5 million deal to acquire VIBSQ LLC, the parent company of Bakers Square and Village Inn.
The deal, which is slated to close in July, will bring 148 restaurants under the BBQ Holdings umbrella.
The news comes not long after the parent company of Bakers Square and Village Inn came out of bankruptcy. In January 2020, the restaurants’ parent company American Blue Ribbon Holdings LLC declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy and closed more than a dozen locations. But, in September of the same year, the company split into two separate businesses and emerged from bankruptcy, according to trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News.
In a news release, BBQ Holdings CEO Jeff Crivello said the two restaurant chains are a “great complement to our growing portfolio of restaurants.”
“Adding them to our family of brands will only strengthen our company as a whole,” he said. “We’re excited to put these two brands on a new and reinvigorated growth path.”
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, BBQ Holdings said it will sell 1 million shares of its own stock to finance the acquisition.
For its part, BBQ Holdings is coming off a solid year, financially speaking. For its 2020 fiscal year, the company pulled in $4.3 million in net income, up from a net loss of more than $1 million in the prior year. In FY2020, BBQ Holdings also reported revenue of $121.4 million compared to $85.5 million in the prior year. The company’s early 2020 acquisition of the Granite City brewpub chain helped boost its bottom line.
Famous Dave’s also has been tinkering with new restaurant concepts to adapt to consumers’ changing preferences. That includes a new “line-service model” restaurant in Coon Rapids.
In Minnesota, Bakers Square currently operates restaurants in St. Paul, Coon Rapids, and Mankato. Village Inn doesn’t have a presence in the Twin Cities metro, but it does operate three locations in Greater Minnesota, with restaurants in Moorhead, Wyoming, and Virginia, Minnesota.
