Arby’s Was Written Off. Then This Investor Rescued It. Now He Wants to Do the Same Thing for Pizza Hut.

Listen to this post

Yum Brands is in exclusive talks with LongRange Capital to sell Pizza Hut, according to Restaurant Business. LongRange’s founder, Bob Berlin, has done this before. As a managing director at Baupost Group, he helped invest in Arby’s in 2011, a struggling chain weighed down by debt. Its new owners invested in operations and launched the “We have the meats” campaign and never looked back. They eventually created Inspire Brands, which is now targeting a $20 billion IPO that would rank among the largest in restaurant history.

Pizza Hut is a harder challenge. The chain has shrunk from 8,000 domestic locations in 1999 to just over 6,300 today and is about to slip to third in the U.S. pizza market behind Domino’s and Little Caesars. But it still has nearly 14,000 international locations and a brand that generations grew up with. If LongRange brings the same patience it brought to Arby’s, the chain that invented the Book-It program might have one more chapter left.