News

Burger King franchisee's comp sales rise 3.3 percent in Q3

November 5, 2014

Carrols Restaurant Group, Burger King's largest franchisee, has announced financial results for Q3, which includes a sales increase of 6.8 percent. Comp sales increased 3.3 percent, compared to 0.4 percent in the prior year period.

In a company news release, CEO Daniel T. Accordino said Q3 represented the best quarter in nearly two years.

"This reflected continued traction from the 2 for $5 menu promotions and success of the limited-time return and promotion of Chicken Fries. Despite the headwind from a 32-percent increase in beef costs from the third quarter of 2013, we also increased Restaurant-Level EBITDA, Restaurant-Level EBITDA Margin and Adjusted EBITDA due to operational improvements made over the past year at the restaurants acquired from Burger King Corporation in 2012. We are further encouraged by robust October sales trends from our recent $1.49 Chicken Nuggets promotion," he added.

The company also announced that on Nov. 4, it completed the previously announced acquisition of 64 Burger King restaurants from certain subsidiaries of Heartland Food LLC. The acquired restaurants are located in or around Nashville, Tennesee (27 restaurants), Springfield, Illinois (11 restaurants), Terre Haute, Indiana (15 restaurants), Evansville, Indiana (7 restaurants), and other nearby markets (4 restaurants). This expands the company's operations into a number of new markets including two additional states.

With this acquisition, the company has acquired a total of 123 restaurants since the end of April 2014 and is now operating 675 Burger King restaurants across 15 states.

"Our near-term attention will turn to the integration of these recently acquired restaurants as we implement our operating systems and focus on improving the operating and financial performance of these restaurants. We believe that there will continue to be opportunities to acquire additional restaurants in the future as we execute on our longer-term growth plan," Accordino said.