Arby's, Buffalo Wild Wings Have New Parent Company
Inspire Brands, Inc., a new global, multi-brand restaurant company, launched following the completion of a $2.9 billion acquisition of Buffalo Wild Wings, Inc. by Arby’s Restaurant Group, Inc.
Inspire was co-founded by Paul Brown of Arby’s and Neal Aronson of Roark. Brown will serve as Chief Executive Officer of the company. Inspire will oversee the continued growth and success of Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings and an emerging brand, R Taco, while building a platform for future strategic additions.
Inspire is one of the largest owner-operators of restaurants with more than 1,700 company-owned restaurants. System wide, Inspire includes more than 4,600 company-owned and franchised restaurants with more than 150,000 team members across 15 countries. The combined 2017 global system sales of its restaurants exceeds $7.6 billion.
“We believe the time is right to create a different kind of restaurant company – one with a broad portfolio of distinct brands across a full spectrum of restaurant occasions,” said Paul Brown, Chief Executive Officer of Inspire Brands. “Our goal is to build an organization that leverages the benefits of scale, not only to save cost, but also to enable outsized investments in long-term growth initiatives.”
The objective of Inspire is to build a family of powerful, distinct restaurant brands that each have high-growth potential, both domestically and internationally. The Inspire organization is designed to enable each individual brand to benefit from and build off the strengths of the others.
“I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity ahead,” Brown said. “Our family of brands are iconic within their restaurant segments and have succeeded with the help of a strong franchise base, differentiated marketing and, most importantly, delicious food. I’m looking forward to accelerating their growth under our new model.”
Inspire will be led by a team of executives with deep and diverse experience in the restaurant industry, as well as with other multi-brand organizations. The Inspire headquarters will be based in Atlanta, Ga., and it will also operate a support center in Minneapolis, Minn.
