There is a spectrum of opportunities for restaurant acquisitions available for operators and investors alike. Restaurant Acquisitions: A Three-Bucket Thesis Transformative technologies improving productivity in foodservice are likely to gain attention and investments as well. The restaurant space saw its first unicorn in sweetgreen, and we anticipate a handful more over the coming years. We’ve seen this in other sectors - technology, in particular - where there’s been a huge uptick in the number of unicorns (privately held startups valued at more than $1 billion). There’s plenty of capital to put behind foodservice companies, and some concepts that are not even on the radar right now will jump to very large valuations in the next few years - even a market for distressed assets. While we expect M&A activity to continue to pick up over the next five years, there’s going to be a significant change in strategies. If the economy is booming, emerging brands and markets will reveal new growth acquisition targets and look to create footholds in new geographies (cross-border deals represent more than a third of global M&A activity). If there’s a liquidity crisis, M&A opportunities will come through consolidation and distressed assets investment.

And regardless of the future economic climate, there will be an opportunity in the foodservice space. Big companies are getting bigger and consolidating chains across categories, cuisines, and technologies.

Restaurant mergers and acquisitions are having an influential impact on the global foodservice industry.

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