Restaurants & Hospitality Acquisitions in 2018

Pioneer Capital, together with current TRML board members Mark Rose and Bruce Davidson, purchased The Rees Management Ltd (manager of The Rees Hotel Queenstown) in a management-led transaction announced 12 October 2018. The deal positions The Rees as the centrepiece of a strategy to develop a boutique New Zealand hotel chain targeting the high-end international tourism market, with the existing management team and staff retained.

Global investment firm KKR will acquire The Bay Club Company, a San Francisco-based active lifestyle and hospitality operator, from York Capital Management and minority investors. The Bay Club operates seven California campuses with more than 50,000 members and employs over 4,000 people; deal terms were not disclosed.

St. Louis-based private equity firm Millstone Capital Advisors has acquired Native Foods, a Chicago-based plant-focused fast-casual restaurant chain with 13 locations across California, Colorado, Oregon and Illinois. Millstone said the investment will provide resources to support Native Foods' expansion while maintaining the brand's plant-based mission and operations under existing management.

Uber Eats has acquired orderTalk, a restaurant online-ordering and POS-integration technology company originally founded in South Africa and later based in Dallas, Texas. The deal — announced by Knife Capital, which managed the HBD Venture Capital fund that invested in orderTalk — will strengthen Uber Eats' point-of-sale integration capabilities and represents a VC exit for Knife Capital and HBD Venture Capital; terms were not disclosed.

Los Angeles-based Elite Restaurant Group, led by Mike Nakhleh, is acquiring the Daphne's California Greek brand and has taken over operations of 23 California locations. Elite plans to remodel the restaurants, simplify the name to Daphne's, launch a new menu and retail products, and pursue growth via franchising and adding roughly 10 corporate locations per year.