Sentinel Capital Partners, a private equity firm that invests in promising, lower midmarket companies, today announced it has sold Huddle House, Inc., a leading franchisor of family dining restaurants in the Southeast. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Huddle House was founded in 1964 with a focus on serving quality food in warm, friendly environments that bring communities together. Huddle House offers customers “Any Meal. Any Time.” with a broad menu of high quality, cooked-to-order food, 24-hour service, and breakfast, lunch, and dinner served all day. Huddle House has 349 units that generate more than $240 million in annual system-wide sales.
“Working closely with Huddle House’s talented management team has been a great experience,” said Jim Coady, a partner at Sentinel. “Throughout our ownership, Huddle House has achieved impressive, system-wide operational results that have increased efficiency and improved productivity at the individual restaurant level. Average unit volume increased by 14% on our watch, which reflects the commitment and dedication to excellence of the entire Huddle House team.”
“Sentinel has been a great partner to Huddle House and over the past six years, has helped us set and achieve meaningful strategic milestones,” said Michael Abt, CEO of Huddle House. “Our customers, franchisees, operators, and employees are super excited about Huddle House’s future.”
The past year has been highly productive for Sentinel. Besides selling Huddle House, Sentinel also completed exits from Checkers/Rally’s, the nation’s largest franchisor and operator of dual drive-thru hamburger QSRs; National Spine & Pain Centers, a leading service provider to interventional pain management physicians; PlayCore, the leading North American supplier of play, park, and recreation products; and WellSpring Consumer Healthcare, a North American marketer of OTC health brands. Also during the past year, Sentinel made four new platform investments: cabi, a leading direct marketer of women’s fashion apparel; Captain D’s, a leading restaurant operator in the QSR seafood sector; MB2 Dental Solutions, a rapidly-growing dental service organization with a unique physician-centric ownership model; and Nekoosa, a leading manufacturer of specialty paper and film products used in the graphics and commercial print markets.
In January 2018, Sentinel also announced the closing of its $2.15 billion sixth private equity fund and its $460 million inaugural junior capital fund.
About Sentinel Capital Partners
Sentinel Capital Partners specializes in partnering with entrepreneurial executives to buy and build lower midmarket companies in the United States and Canada. Sentinel targets eight industry sectors: aerospace/defense, business services, consumer, distribution, food/restaurants, franchising, healthcare, and industrials. Sentinel invests in management buyouts, purchases of family businesses, corporate divestitures, going-private transactions, and special situations of businesses with up to $65 million in EBITDA. For more information about Sentinel, please visit www.sentinelpartners.com.
About Huddle House
Committed to serving “Any Meal. Any Time.” Huddle House restaurants have become icons in the communities they serve throughout the country. The core values on which the brand was founded – serving freshly prepared, quality home-style food in a warm, friendly environment that brings the community together – are as true today as they were when it was founded 54 years ago. Today, the brand has 349 locations. For more information about Huddle House, please visit www.huddlehouse.com.
