News

Arby's, BWW sale complete, Inspire Brands launches as major industry player

February 5, 2018

The $2.9 billion acquisition of Buffalo Wild Wings, Inc. by Arby's Restaurant Group, Inc. completed today has launched the new Inspire Brands family on very solid footing. The company was co-founded by Arby's CEO Paul Brown, with Roark Capital's Neal Aronson, according to a news release. 

With Roark, an Atlanta-based private equity firm as majority owner, Brown will assume the CEO spot for the new company as it oversees continued growth at Arby's and Buffalo Wild Wings, as well as emerging brand, R Taco, while building its platform for more additions later.

As such, systemwide, 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," Brown said in the release. "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.

The Inspire headquarters will be based in Atlanta, Ga., and will also operate a support center in Minneapolis, Minneapolis.