At a time when the restaurant industry is under great threat brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, a fund dedicated to food and beverage has been created by Mercato Partners called Savory. The $90 million fund will invest in compelling innovative concepts for restaurants, as well as provide a team of highly experienced industry professionals to fuel each company’s growth and operations.
The award-winning restaurant operations team is comprised of 50 plus industry veterans that have previously led restaurant development at Four Foods Group, one of the fastest-growing restaurant operators in the country. Their expertise is in a broad range areas critical for the scaling of restaurant operations that includes: real estate selection and negotiation, development and construction of each restaurant location, project and event management, supply chain/procurement, and more. Their track records reflect their skill in establishing successful processes that are critical for emerging multi-unit concepts.
The restaurant focused fund was driven by Mercato Partners’ founder Greg Warnock in partnership with restaurant industry veteran Andrew K. Smith along with his leadership team. Savory brings together the deep industry experience of Smith and his team with Warnock and the Mercato Partners team who have a track record of successfully executing institutional investment strategies.
“Thousands of restaurant brands have built winning concepts with a promising mix of culture, flavor profile, and momentum; however, the creativity and courage needed to launch a new restaurant is much different from the skill set required to scale a restaurant concept to dozens of locations in multiple states,” said Smith, managing director of Savory.
According to Smith, Savory’s approach follows a proven formula of identifying where consumers have established their loyal patronage, then providing capital for rapid expansion of the emerging unique brand, and giving restaurant founders a ready support team to execute—bring benefit to all in the ensuing success.
Savory is already active in this space with a portfolio that includes Mo’Bettahs, R&R BBQ and Swig that have had high year to year growth, validating the decision to commit further funding to this industry despite the current economic period.
Kimo Mack, co-founder of Mo’Bettahs gives credit to the Savory team for providing timely resources to expand that put them on a track of greater success, stating, “We created Mo’Bettahs to give guests an authentic Hawaiian experience, which we were able to successfully provide through lots of hard work and deliberate culture curation over the past 10 years.”
