Last month I addressed specific financial fixes for casual dining. This month, I’ll dig deeper into three areas of concern: dealing with problem stores, leases and senior debt. There are always underperforming stores, both franchised or non-franchised. Sometimes, franchisors won’t deal with bad stores until the franchisee is on the steps of bankruptcy court. And […]

Trying to obtain bank financing, equipment leasing or even vendor financing for a restaurant is one of the biggest challenges in the business world. Each week I hear from local restaurateurs who have either hit the wall and need some liquidity because it’s a slow time of year or have been undercapitalized from the start. […]

Obviously, the casual dining world has its ups and downs. Right now we are in a down period, with some major players struggling the last few years. There seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel, as reflected in Applebee’s recent performance—nothing stellar, but a slight uptick. But there really is no […]