Irvine-based American RestaurantHoldings Inc. has bought three restaurantchains over the past 15 months with com-bined systemwide sales “approaching $40million,” Chief Executive Tim Betts said.Now it has to run them.“Our plan in 2015 is to grow the brands,”

he said.The three chains—its first multiunit

buys—are Fresca’sMexican Grill inCosta Mesa; JoJo’sPizza Kitchen inChino Hills; andMuscle MakerGrill in Colonia,N.J.The acquisitions

fit the company’splans to buy “stable,c a s h - f l o w i n g , ”multiunit fast-casualchains, and it so farhas focused on un-

derperforming brands.The $40 million in sales would put

American Restaurant Holdings at aboutNo. 29 on the Business Journal’s list ofrestaurant companies based in OrangeCounty, just cracking the ranking.OC locations planned or already open in

the three chains total about 20.

VarietyThe diversity of the acquisitions—Mex-

ican, Italian, and American—is part of theplan.“One of our goals is a strong presence in

the food courts,” Betts said. “We want toprovide multiple alternatives” to con-sumers, and to franchisees who might wantto own more than one brand.Betts said a unifying element is “the food

you love with a healthy spin” and that heexpects the three chains to find healthfulalternatives in their own niches—gluten-free pizza dough or turkey meatballs in-stead of beef at JoJo’s, for instance—andto “cross-pollinate” in mix-and-matchmenu development: What can Fresca’s takeaway from a healthier nachos item at, say,Muscle Maker Grill?The company also has two stand-alone

restaurants: Canyon Fireside Grille inRancho Santa Margarita, and FronterasMexican Grill and Cantina in Alhambra.The former was recently remodeled and

has a new menu.The latter will become a Fresca’s, Betts

said.

Franchise PlansBetts said that this year he plans to open

a couple of company-owned stores in eachchain and lay the groundwork for furtherfranchising.The three chains total roughly 70 restau-

rants and 800 employees, including at fran-chised and licensed locations.About 90% of the system is franchised. American Restaurant directly employs

about 200 of the 800 employees, Bettssaid.

Fresca’s has eight restaurants: five com-pany-owned locations in Orange County,and three licensed at outlet malls managedby Newport Beach-based Craig RealtyGroup in Los Angeles, Phoenix, andWoodburn, Ore.JoJo’s has one restaurant each in Brea,

Mira Loma and Chino Hills.Betts said JoJo’s would likely add sites in

the Inland Empire, where two of its threelocations are.“It could be existing pizza locations that

would switch over,” which would reducestartup costs, he said.Fresca’s is planned for the internal switch

in Alhambra, with future locations fran-chised, not licensed.Muscle Maker has about 55 locations in

11 states, more than 80% of them in NewJersey and New York. It has two Californialocations in the San Francisco Bay area.The chain had about 64 locations in 2013,

according to a restaurant trade journal, andis nearing that level again. Seven new franchised locations are

scheduled to open in six states—includingan entry in North Carolina—by midyear.Betts said he plans to open two company-

owned locations in Irvine this summer.Orange-based Muscle Maker franchisee

Veejay LLC has agreed to open seven to10 locations in OC over the next five years.Muscle Maker brings franchising experi-

ence that can help the parent company’soverall efforts, Betts said.The founder and management team from

that purchase includes former Pizza HutPresident Arthur Gunther, an executiveBetts said would aid in developing the fran-chising program.“We’re leveraging our own expertise …

to do the franchising.”

Financial FutureBetts said he worked in venture capital in

the 1990s.“I come from the investment side,” rep-

resenting companies that wanted to be ac-quired, he said. He advised those companies and began to

make minority investments under Irvine-based Nobis Capital Advisors Inc., thenbegan to investigate industries where hecould buy or control companies outright.“We spent about a year looking … and

ended up in fast-casual” in January 2013,he said. Betts took over a nonoperating shell com-

pany in the middle of that year and formedARHI. American Restaurants LLC is its oper-

ating entity, which forms separate affiliatesto run each acquisition, Betts said. It’s publicly listed over-the-counter, but

the stock almost never trades, according toYahoo Finance: 1,200 shares total havetraded on six days over the 15 months cov-ering its recent acquisition activity.Yahoo and Google list the company’s

float at 98,000 shares, for a market cap of$220,000 at its steady price of $2.25 ashare, but information Betts providedshows 254 shareholders and 39.4 millionshares for a market cap of about $89 mil-lion.He said the company is “working on our

financials” to become a fully reportingcompany. �

4 ORANGE COUNTY BUSINESS JOURNAL Local breaking news: www.ocbj.com APRIL 27, 2015

RESTAURANTS: Franchises, local openings now order of day

American Restaurant HoldingsSets Growth Plans for 3 Chains

By PAUL HUGHES

Strong Families, Safe Kids – www.olivecrest.org

Betts: seeks to “pro-vide multiple alterna-tives” to customers,franchisees

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