More than a half-million people visited Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants on Super Bowl Sunday. On Monday, a new owner counted up the receipts.
"They served 14 million wings in one day. That sounds like a pretty successful brand to me," Paul Brown, the new boss, said Tuesday. "Our number one focus is not to mess anything up."
With the closing of its $2.9 billion purchase of Buffalo Wild Wings, Atlanta-based Arby's Restaurant Group renamed itself Inspire Brands Inc. and unveiled plans to buy other restaurants. The company will target chains that, like Buffalo Wild Wings, are distinctive in their niche, have a successful track record and still have room to grow.
Brown, a former top brands executive at Hilton Worldwide, said the idea of forming a portfolio-type company started brewing two years ago between executives at Arby's and Roark Capital Group, the Atlanta investment firm that is the majority owner of Arby's and more than a dozen other smaller restaurant chains.
Last February, when Golden Valley-based Buffalo Wild Wings was in the midst of a proxy battle with an activist investor, the Arby's and Roark executives decided to sound it out.
"We knew that we had to start with the right first two companies coming together," Brown said. "In parallel, the Buffalo Wild Wings opportunity presented itself. I don't think it could have been scripted more perfectly."
The companies agreed on terms in November, with Buffalo Wild Wings shareholders offered $157 a share, a price that was in the middle of its trading range early last year but well above the $98 it fell to in August.
After going public in 2003, Buffalo Wild Wings delivered one of the best investment performances of any restaurant company. Its fast growth began to level off in 2015 and 2016, however, the proxy battle in late 2016 and early last year unveiled differing ideas about its direction.