Casual Dining Franchisor Grows Quickly Through Mergers and Acquisitions

Written by Ashley Dameron

February 14, 2022

Casual Dining Franchisor  Grows Quickly Through Mergers & Acquisitions

CASE STUDY

When a 194-unit casual dining operator and franchisor came to InfoSync in March of 2021, they had one goal in mind: grow the business through mergers and acquisitions as quickly as possible.

“We believed we were going to grow the company through mergers and acquisitions and wanted to have a platform that made sense so that we could more rapidly expand.” Said the CFO (formerly the SVP of Finance). “The InfoSync shared services platform allows us to plug and play as we make these acquisitions.”

    The Challenge

    The company had a new SVP of Finance and a small functional accounting team to perform regular maintenance and daily tasks. However, the SVP knew he would need higher-level expertise to be able to accomplish the scalability the company was striving for.

    “Under normal circumstances, you acquire additional locations and you spend months trying to hire additional accountants, controllers and AP people, everything you need to handle the integration,” he said. “On top of that, you’re usually dealing with disparate systems, so you’re trying to figure out a different accounting package and different point-of-sale system, or the system that pulls the data into the accounting system, trying to get reporting to work or trying to get store-level analytics. From an integration standpoint, there’s a large amount of work to do.”

    Not only was the company in the middle of several mergers and acquisitions, they were also moving their corporate function from Denver and Nashville to one location in Houston, Texas. The leadership team understood that if they were to continue hiring and training the needed staff to take on the integration workload, it would require a huge investment of time and money, and potentially cause inefficiencies that would ultimately hinder their growth efforts.

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    The Solution

    In May of 2021, this Operator/Franchisor went live with InfoSync’s services, leveraging our Finance & Accounting and Payroll platforms.

    “We didn’t have the depth or quality of resources to do anything other than accounting maintenance,” The CFO Stated. “I needed a robust team that I could grow with.”

    Once the company partnered with InfoSync, they were able to hire a controller and other key resources at the management level. The CFO was able to build the finance leadership team needed for financial reporting, board reporting, high-level analysis, and other strategic items. This leadership team worked with InfoSync and quickly became more efficient in the day-to-day processes like Accounts Payable, Close, General Ledger Transactions, and other day-to-day processes

    The Outcome

    In September of 2021, the operator/franchisor acquired 50 high volume restaurants with 250 million dollars in revenue, growing their company by 50% in just a few short months.

    The CFO said, “InfoSync takes care of everything so we’re able to either immediately or within a couple months start that transition and everything’s on one accounting and payroll system. It allows us to spend more time focused on strategic initiatives and less time trying to do the integration on these deals.”

    Since coming on-board with InfoSync they have seen significant operational cost savings, modeling an estimated cost savings of $1 million per year and realizing about $500,000 in their first year.

    Today, the operator/franchisor is operating over 250 locations. They’re building new restaurants and actively looking for another acquisition of similar scale to the one they closed last year. They are thrilled to have InfoSync’s platform to facilitate their plan for continued rapid growth.

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