Franchising

Flynn, Wendy's franchisees buy NPC International Pizza Hut, Wendy's stores

January 7, 2021

After months of roiling around where NPC International's substantial Pizza Hut and Wendy's stores would end up, today NPC said that mediation successfully produced separate asset purchase agreements with Flynn Restaurant Group and Wendy's International LLC, which will result in the sale of substantially all of NPC's assets and pave the way for NPC to complete its chapter 11 restructuring, a news release said.

A hearing before the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas to consider the approval of the sale transactions is set for Jan. 15. The combined purchase price of the two sale transactions is approximately $801 million.

The asset purchase agreements filed with the court today includes:

• Flynn will acquire over 925 of NPC's Pizza Hut restaurants, as well as about half of NPC's Wendy's restaurants and substantially all of NPC's shared service assets.
• Wendy's will acquire NPC's remaining Wendy's restaurants and assign the right to acquire restaurants to five current Wendy's franchisees.
• The Purchasers have agreed to offer positions of employment to all of NPC's restaurant field operations employees and substantially all other non-field NPC employees.

"This is an excellent outcome for NPC's Wendy's restaurants and our team," said Carl Hauch, CEO & President of NPC's Wendy's division, in the release. "We are very pleased that our restaurants will be joining the ranks of established, high-performing restaurant franchise groups.

"We are confident that NPC's Pizza Hut restaurants will be in very good hands as part of Flynn Restaurant Group," said NPC Pizza Hut division President and CEO Jon Weber, in the release. "We have developed excellent teams at our Pizza Hut restaurants around the country, and I'm extremely proud of the way our organization rallied together in 2020 and maintained our commitment to delivering excellent quality and service."

Subject to court approval, the execution of definitive documentation, and the approval of certain matters subject to Wendy's and Pizza Hut's consent of Flynn Restaurant Group as a new franchisee, the sale transactions are expected to close by the end of the second quarter of 2021.