Green Shoot Brands, which runs Auntie Anne's and Dave's Hot Chicken units, now owns the 22-unit Jack Brown's chain outright. It came the same week a Wendy's franchisee joined a bid for Wendy's.
Green Shoot Brands has spent seven years paying royalties on other people's brands. Now it owns one.
The Florida operator bought all 22 Jack Brown's Beer & Burger Joint restaurants, a spokesperson told The Tennessean, which first reported the deal Oct. 24. The locations span Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Terms weren't disclosed. "The burger, the beer and the feel won't change," the spokesperson said.
The people aren't changing either. Childhood friends Mike Sabin and Aaron Ludwig, who opened the first Jack Brown's in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 2009, will keep running the company with President Jason Owenby. Chenault Sanders, an early investor who brought the concept to Nashville, sold his stake, though he and his partners are keeping the real estate under the Germantown and Clarksville restaurants, FSR reported, citing the Nashville Business Journal.
Green Shoot's day job is franchising, from the other side of the table. It operates about 410 restaurants under nine brands, including Auntie Anne's, Cinnabon, Jamba, Carvel, Little Caesars, Dave's Hot Chicken, Nothing Bundt Cakes and PopUp Bagels, and reports more than $500 million in system sales. Earlier this month it dropped the Fresh Dining Concepts name and rebranded around evergreen capital, money with no scheduled exit. Jack Brown's is brand number ten, and the first one Green Shoot controls instead of licensing.
Look at what else happened this week. Flynn Group, one of the largest franchisees in the Wendy's system, joined Trian's bid to buy Wendy's. Very different scale, same direction. The operators are moving up the stack.
I think franchisors should read both deals as a warning about who holds the power, not a curiosity. Your largest franchisees often understand your unit economics better than headquarters does. They know what a remodel really costs and what a new menu item does to ticket times. When those operators also have patient money, they stop being just customers of the brand and start being potential owners of it.
The evergreen pitch is also a pitch to founders. Selling to a buyer with no exit date is an easier conversation when you want to keep your name on the door. Whether that promise holds once growth targets arrive is the part nobody can see yet.
Green Shoot hasn't said whether it plans to franchise Jack Brown's, only that more expansion is coming. If it does start selling franchises, it will learn what its own franchisors already know: the hard part is the other operators.
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