The ownership map
Who owns America’s menus?
Of the 56 chain menus we have graded, 17 answer to a single Atlanta private-equity firm most diners have never heard of. Add up the restaurant side alone and Roark's brands span roughly 80,000 locations worldwide, nearly double McDonald's 45,356 (year-end 2025). Ownership is invisible at the counter, but it shows up in the menu: in the value tiers, the app-gated deals, the limited-time calendars, and, we would argue, in the grades.
A 3-minute audio read of the analysis
17
graded menus under Roark Capital
B+
their average menu-craft grade
A-
founder and family held average
Every graded chain menu, by who owns it
And how each class grades on menu craft
One dot per graded menu. Reading down the columns: the family-held dots cluster at the top grades, the portfolio dots spread wide.
The quiet empire
Roark Capital
An Atlanta private-equity firm founded in 2001 by Neal Aronson and named for Howard Roark, the architect hero of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. It manages about $41 billion (per the firm, mid-2026) and holds the largest single collection of menus in this catalog through two platform companies, one twin-brand operator, and two direct deals.
Inspire Brands
The flagship platform, built from Arby's outward.
GoTo Foods (formerly Focus Brands)
The mall-and-snack platform: the smells, scoops, and sweet tea.
CKE Restaurants
The charbroiled twins, split across a map line, acquired in 2013.
Held directly
Subway (about $9.6 billion, completed April 2024 after an FTC review) and a majority of Dave's Hot Chicken (about $1 billion, 2025).
- Inspire Brands reports $33.4 billion in global system sales across 33,300+ restaurants (2026), and has called itself the second-largest US restaurant company by system sales since the Dunkin' deal closed.
- GoTo Foods (renamed from Focus Brands in February 2024) runs 7,100+ locations across all 50 states and about 70 countries.
- Beyond restaurants, the same firm owns Driven Brands, ServiceMaster, Massage Envy, Primrose Schools, and Purpose Brands (Anytime Fitness plus Orangetheory); Roark says its brands produce about $100 billion in annual system revenue from 117,000+ locations.
- In May 2026, Inspire Brands confidentially filed for an IPO.
The footprint, drawn to scale
Subway ~37,000 · Inspire ~33,300 · GoTo ~7,100 · CKE ~3,800 · Dave’s ~300
As-of dates vary by component (2024 to 2026); every figure is in the sources below.
A quarter century of buying menus
- 2001
Roark Capital founded
Neal Aronson, Atlanta; the name honors Rand's fictional architect
- 2011$430M
Arby's
an 81.5% stake; the seed of the flagship platform
- 2013~$1.7B
CKE: Carl's Jr. and Hardee's
Roark's 17th restaurant investment (reported figure)
- 2018$5.2B
Buffalo Wild Wings, then Sonic
$2.9B and $2.3B; the BWW close created Inspire Brands
- 2019undisclosed
Jimmy John's
Roark had held a majority since 2016
- 2020$11.3B
Dunkin' and Baskin-Robbins
then the second-biggest US restaurant deal ever
- 2024~$9.6B
Subway
cleared after an FTC review; Focus Brands becomes GoTo Foods the same year
- 2025~$1B
Dave's Hot Chicken
a majority of the chain that started with $900 in a parking lot
- 2026
Inspire files confidentially for an IPO
the buy-side wave starts turning into an exit
Read the 17 breakdowns side by side and a house style emerges: a named-price value tier at the bottom of the board, a premium anchor at the top, deals migrating into the app where they can be targeted and repriced, and a limited-time calendar doing the advertising. None of it is unique to Roark brands, but the consistency across banners that share nothing else, a pretzel counter and a wing bar and a sub shop, is the tell that menus are being run as a portfolio discipline.
The other consolidators
Private equity and holding companies each carrying one graded menu here.
- Blackstone bought about 90% of Jersey Mike's at a roughly $8 billion valuation (closed January 2025), with an earn-out that pays in full at the 4,000th store; it confidentially filed the chain for an IPO in spring 2026.
- JAB Holding, the Reimann family office, controls Panera Brands (Panera, Caribou, Einstein Bros.), about 80% of Pret A Manger, and remains Krispy Kreme's largest shareholder (43% as of April 2026).
- Butterfly Equity, a food-only Beverly Hills firm, bought Qdoba from Apollo in 2022 and closed a $527 million continuation fund in 2025 to expand it.
- Fortress-managed funds took Red Lobster out of Chapter 11 in September 2024 with 545 locations and a new CEO.
- Biglari Holdings has run Steak 'n Shake since 2008; the footprint has shrunk by more than a third since 2019, to 404 units.
- Joe & The Juice went majority to General Atlantic in 2023 (about $641 million) and took Abu Dhabi capital at a $1.8 billion valuation.
- Logan's Roadhouse was sold by SPB Hospitality to SSCP Management in March 2026, the last of the old Craftworks concepts SPB divested.
- Pinkberry is owned by Kahala Brands, a subsidiary of Canada's publicly traded MTY Food Group; its froyo footprint has shrunk to about 72 US locations from a late-2000s peak near 260 worldwide.
The public multi-brand platforms
Stock-market conglomerates running portfolios of banners.
- Yum Brands runs 63,000+ KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Habit units in 155 countries, 97% franchised (year-end 2025).
- Yum agreed in June 2026 to sell Pizza Hut for about $2.7 billion, the US and rest of world to LongRange Capital and mainland China to Yum China, expected to close in Q3 2026; KFC and Taco Bell stay with Yum.
- Restaurant Brands International passed 33,000 restaurants in 2025 across Burger King, Tim Hortons, Popeyes, and Firehouse Subs.
- Darden operates about 2,160 restaurants across ten brands from Olive Garden to Ruth's Chris; Dine Brands franchises about 3,500 Applebee's, IHOP, and Fuzzy's locations.
Public, one banner
Single-brand public companies, answerable to shareholders but not to a portfolio playbook.
The holdouts: founder and family held
Still controlled by the people whose names are on the door, or close to it.
- In-N-Out has one owner, Lynsi Snyder, sole heir to the founding family; 424 locations and it has never franchised.
- Chick-fil-A is on its third generation of Cathys and reached about $22 billion in 2024 system sales, the third-largest US chain behind McDonald's and Starbucks, on the highest per-store volumes in fast food.
- Panda Restaurant Group, wholly owned by the Cherng family, calls itself America's largest family-owned restaurant company at roughly $6.2 billion in sales.
- Todd Graves still owns about 90% of Raising Cane's; Forbes called him America's richest restaurateur in 2025 at roughly $22 billion.
- Five Guys is still run by the Murrell family; the five sons in the name each work in the business.
- Little Caesars is wholly owned by the Ilitch family, who founded it in Detroit in 1959; it is the third-largest US pizza chain and has never left family hands.
- Crumbl is still founder-led by cousins Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley, who sold only a minority stake to TSG Consumer Partners in 2025.
The pattern
What ownership does to the menu in your hands
The grades tell the story. The founder and family held menus in this catalog average A-: In-N-Out sells three burgers, Raising Cane’s sells one product, Chick-fil-A keeps a short board with charm-priced discipline. Focus is a luxury of owners who answer to nobody, and focus is most of what earns an A from us.
The Roark portfolio averages B+. The craft is real, Cinnabon’s aroma machine and Arby’s Meat Mountain are two of the sharpest plays we have graded, but the portfolio playbook also carries its own tax: value numbers that churn quarter to quarter, deals gated behind apps, and boards that sprawl as every banner chases every daypart. Subway, the biggest acquisition of them all, carries the lowest grade in the catalog.
None of this is a verdict on the food, and ownership is not destiny. It is a reminder that a menu is a managed asset, and that whoever manages it is making behavioral choices about what you order before you walk in. That is the whole premise of this site.
The consolidation is no longer a niche story. After the Subway deal, antitrust economists at The Sling counted four of the six largest US limited-service sandwich and deli chains under Roark: Subway, Jimmy John's, Arby's, and McAlister's, in a segment doing $26 billion a year. The FTC reviewed the deal after Senator Elizabeth Warren warned it "creates a sandwich shop monopoly"; it closed anyway in April 2024.
The wave is now turning toward exits: both Inspire Brands and Jersey Mike's confidentially filed for IPOs in spring 2026, which would hand the portfolio playbook to public shareholders.
Common questions
- What restaurants does Roark Capital own?
- Through Inspire Brands: Arby's, Sonic, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin', Baskin-Robbins, and Jimmy John's. Through GoTo Foods: Cinnabon, Auntie Anne's, Moe's Southwest Grill, Jamba, Carvel, Schlotzsky's, and McAlister's Deli. Through CKE: Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. Plus Subway and a majority of Dave's Hot Chicken directly. Read those menus side by side and the shared playbook shows: named value tiers, app-gated deals, and a limited-time calendar doing the advertising.
- Is Subway owned by private equity?
- Yes. Roark Capital completed its roughly $9.6 billion purchase of Subway in April 2024 after an FTC review, the third-largest US restaurant deal on record. On our menu-craft scale Subway carries the lowest grade in the catalog, and its coupon-driven value churn is exactly the discipline problem a portfolio owner now has to fix.
- How many restaurants does Roark Capital control?
- Roughly 80,000 restaurant locations worldwide as of 2026, adding Subway (~37,000), Inspire Brands (33,300+), GoTo Foods (7,100+), CKE (~3,800), and Dave's Hot Chicken; that is nearly double McDonald's 45,356. Counting its non-restaurant franchises, the firm says its brands take in about $100 billion a year across 117,000+ locations. Scale like that is why the same menu moves keep appearing under different logos.
- What is the largest family-owned restaurant company in the US?
- By sales it is Chick-fil-A, run by the Cathy family since 1946, at about $22 billion in 2024. Panda Restaurant Group, wholly owned by the Cherng family at roughly $6.2 billion, claims the title of largest family-owned restaurant company because its stores are company-run rather than franchised. Either way, the family-held menus in this catalog out-grade the private-equity portfolios, and focus is most of the reason.
Sources (18)
- Roark Capital, About ($41B AUM; ~$100B system revenue; 117,000+ locations)
- Wikipedia: Roark Capital Group (founding, naming, portfolio)
- Inspire Brands, About Us ($33.4B system sales; 33,300+ restaurants)
- Inspire Brands: Dunkin' Brands acquisition, $11.3B (2020)
- Subway newsroom: sale to Roark complete (April 30, 2024)
- Franchise Times: FTC OKs Subway sale to Roark
- NRN: Arby's sold to Roark for $430M (2011)
- SEC 8-K: Buffalo Wild Wings, $157/share, ~$2.9B (2017)
- CNBC: Roark buys majority of Dave's Hot Chicken (June 2025)
- CNBC: Blackstone's ~$8B Jersey Mike's deal (Nov 2024)
- CNBC: Inspire Brands confidentially files for IPO (May 2026)
- Fox Business: Warren on the FTC's 'sandwich shop monopoly' probe
- The Sling: Roark owns four of the top six sandwich/deli chains
- Fortress: Red Lobster exits Chapter 11 (Sept 2024)
- Restaurant Dive: SPB Hospitality sells Logan's Roadhouse to SSCP (March 2026)
- Fortune: In-N-Out's Lynsi Snyder (424 locations, never franchised)
- Forbes: Todd Graves, America's richest restaurateur (Sept 2025)
- McDonald's: restaurants by market, year-end 2025 (45,356 worldwide)
Each brand’s ownership is also documented, with its own citations, on its breakdown page. Figures are as of the dates noted and will drift; the grades and brand groupings on this page resolve live from the catalog.