Wednesday, February 8, 2012
News Florida Title Insurance Giant Is Buying O'Charley's
Posted by Nicki Wood on Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 11:06 AM
Nashville-based O'Charley's (CHUX, as it trades on the stock exchange) operates 227 restaurants under the O'Charley's name, 105 under the Ninety Nine concept, and 10 as Stoney River Legendary Steaks.
The Florida company will fold O'Charley's into a restaurant holding company it controls: American Blue Ribbon Holdings. Fidelity National owns almost half of that Denver-based venture, which runs a number of concepts and has annual revenues of $460 million.
O'Charley's, though not nearly as large as another locally based restaurant chain, Cracker Barrel, is something of a Nashville institution. Longtime residents will remember the first O'Charley's opened on 21st Avenue as a date-night spot in the 1970s. Watkins sold the restaurant in 1980 to entrepreneur Dave Wachtel in the 1980s, Watkins went on the found Cheeseburger Charley's with his son, Chuck, in 1988.
Fidelity National paid a 42 percent premium over the chain's closing share price last Friday of $6.92, which is a serious chunk of lettuce. Good move? Bad move? No big deal either way?
Comments (1)
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Charlie Watkins was an interesting guy. I worked at a senior community where he lived from 2007-2011. He would always share his stories about the business and even secretly putting his house up for collateral to get a loan to open that first O Charleys.
He would always ask me for tips on costing out menus. He told me that he never costed out his menu items at his first location and just priced them to a point he thought was fair.
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