In light of an announcement last week that Cara Operations Ltd. will add Original Joe’s (including the Cochrane location), State & Main and the Elephant & Castle chains to its list of western acquisition, the FranWorks Group of Companies – which owns Original Joe’s – confirmed that clients will see little change.
“It’s a great partnership and there will be some great synergy there, but as far as the experience of our guests we still consider ourselves a Calgary-based company and will continue to maintain operations control,” said Richard Homer-Dixon, FranWorks director of operations for Western Canada.
The $93-million acquisition will see Cara assume majority stakeholder control later this year; the bulk of the money will be used by the Original Joe’s Franchise Group to reacquire its trademarks and royalty rights from Diversified Royalty Corp.
Cara is an eastern-based group with a network of some 1,000 restaurants, including Harvey's burgers, Swiss Chalet, New York Fries, Kelsey's, East Side Mario's and Bier Markt that has been looking to expand west.
