Always Be Closing

Friends of Branded!

Happy Saturday and I hope you had a great holiday.

As we brought 2025 to a close this week, I had time to reflect on the journey Branded has been on and I specifically thought about the Cocktails & Connections “Tech the Halls” event that Branded Hospitality hosted on Wednesday, November 20^th, 2019.

To be more precise, it was actually the discussion that took place AFTER the holiday party had officially come to a close with some friends and portfolio companies of Branded that stayed behind for “just one more.”

Thanks to the kindness and generosity of the head of security of the Versa Rooftop (at 218 West 35^th Street, NYC), a small group was permitted to remain to finish our libations and talk about the year that was coming to an end and thoughts about the year ahead.

In an effort to not bury the lead (which I understand I’ve been known to do, especially with my overuse of parentheses), it was at this gathering that one of the participants suggested Branded needed to secure an office space that would establish a New York City co-working space and community hub for professionals in the hospitality, foodservice, and restaurant technology industry. The idea was quickly embraced by the group with the conviction that such a space would foster a community where founders, operators, investors, and creators would help shape the future of hospitality (or at least create value for those in the industry that chose to be part of it).

There are buildings dedicated to the healthcare, design, and other industries. Why can’t the hospitality industry have a single floor to call its own?

Creative ideas ensued and flowed in a way that can only happen after hours and there was real interest from the group in establishing and being part of a co-working space dedicated to our industry. The most important issue that had to be addressed first (sarcasm intended) was the need for a name of such a co-working space.

With the world’s most famous co-working space company, WeWork, having experienced a major crash only a few months earlier (August 2019) when it’s planned IPO revealed massive losses and unsustainable growth, and the ousting of CEO Adam Neumann in September 2019, the name “B Works” was quickly (and humorously) put forward and enthusiastically embraced by the group. Other important issues were discussed as well such as the snacks we’d offer (and whether there would be healthy options), but the night soon came to an end and a few weeks later, 2019 did as well.

In December 2019, the global COVID-19 pandemic began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China. Soon afterward, it spread to other parts of Asia and then worldwide in early 2020. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on January 30^th, 2020, and assessed it as having become a pandemic on March 11^th, 2020.

The pandemic induced significant turmoil in the commercial real estate market, marked by a sharp decline in office demand and from a most local and self-interested standpoint, a floor in our building was vacated and became available. As Warren Buffet famously said, “be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

B Works was born, and it’s proven to be far more than Branded’s HQ and a co-working space, and to be crystal clear, it represents our physical flywheel.

Branded lives at the intersection of hospitality, technology, and capital. This is where we invest, where we advise and it’s what we write and convene conversations about.

B Works is where our intersection becomes physical.

At first glance, B Works might look like a co-working space with its desks, meeting rooms, coffee (and snacks), and WiFi. But that would be akin to calling a restaurant a place with tables and chairs.

B Works is not about square footage; it’s about density of relevance. Branded’s value-proposition has always been about context and helping operators learn from other operators, founders building alongside customers and investors seeing companies in the wild, not just in pitch decks.

B Works allowed us to turn that context into a daily operating environment. Instead of cold intros, one-off conferences, and transactional meetings, the B Works community gets ongoing proximity, repeat interactions, and trust that can only be built over time.

That’s not co-working, that’s ecosystem infrastructure. Thanks to B Works, the Branded flywheel now has a physical hub.

Media creates conversations and community creates relationships. Advisory creates insights and capital creates alignment. B Works is the axle and it’s where portfolio companies meet operators before the pilot. It’s where founders get unfiltered feedback, not curated applause and investors observe behavior, not just narratives.

At B Works, you don’t just talk about being operator-centric, you’re surrounded by operators. It’s Branded’s position that curated proximity beats random serendipity every day of the week (and twice on Sundays)! General co-working spaces offer “serendipity” while B Works offers intentional adjacency.

When everyone in the room sells into restaurants, operates restaurants, invests into restaurants and restaurant adjacent technology, and advises hospitality brands, every conversation compounds. The value isn’t in who you might meet, it’s in who you keep running into.

B Works quietly functions as a real-time hospitality innovation lab for new ideas that are debated before capital is deployed. Where products are pressure tested by real operators and trends are spotted early, not after they hit the trade press (or the Hospitality Headline). 😊

That’s why the B Works community sees things early, not b/c of a crystal ball, but b/c the signal-to-noise ratio is higher when the room is curated.

It’s Branded’s conviction that hospitality doesn’t need more software demos, it needs alignment of interests. It doesn’t need louder voices; it needs trusted rooms. B Works is Branded’s answer to a fragmented industry, and represents a place where capital understands operations and innovation respects the realities of the kitchen and the P&L.

In a world of remote everything, B Works reminds us that some industries still scale through proximity and spoiler alert, hospitality is most certainly such an industry. B Works doesn’t exist alongside Branded Hospitality, it completes it!

B Works is where strategy meets reality, where content meets conversations, and capital meets conviction.

Call to action: for hospitality professionals, start-up companies, emerging companies and mature companies in the hospitality and foodservice industry that are looking to be part of a community and have a physical presence in New York City (where we only have about 27,000 restaurants), we invite you to explore being part of B Works ([email protected]).

It takes a village.

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The predictions for the 2026 M&A market in the restaurant industry are in and overall, the sentiment is very positive. Experts are calling for an acceleration of activity and specifically a meaningful rebound in deal volume driven as a result of a backlog of private equity “dry powder” and valuation expectations aligning between buyers and sellers.

Branded is in the camp of an increase in deals getting done, but we see two divergent deal types ahead.

Of course, we’re going to see deals for high-performing brands with strong unit economics and growth potential. For the past few years, we’ve witnessed emerging quick-service restaurants (“QSR”) and fast-casual brands such as CAVA, Dutch Bros, and Wingstop garner attention and capital. These and other brands with strong, consistent unit economics, disciplined & system-focused operations, and effective technology integration will command higher valuations and be most attractive to buyers.

However, it’s the other side of this divergent ‘coin’ that has Branded particularly excited and I’m referring to the acquisitions of distressed assets. Here I’m focusing on legacy brands under pressure from competition and costs. More store closures and bankruptcies are anticipated, and this is especially true among older brands struggling to adapt to shifting consumer behavior and cost pressures.

This distress creates M&A opportunities for strategic buyers and has Branded feeling particularly confident about its portfolio company, Craveworthy Brands and the unique intellectual property (“IP”) acquisition platform it’s created to take brands from proof of concept to proof of scale.

Over the past 33 months, Craveworthy has proven its model as it acquired 20 premium restaurant brands with strong guest loyalty, which equates to over 300 locations and $400mm in system wide sales. Craveworthy’s systems are in place, the brands are performing, and the team is seasoned. This is an inflection point where platform value compounds rapidly.

Craveworthy takes a venture capital approach where it identifies the brands with breakout potential and fuels the winners. When these brands scale, it creates exceptional returns and its Craveworthy’s operational discipline that gives Branded the confidence that upside will be maximized.

Parties interested in exploring a proven operator platform with multiple revenue streams and a leadership team that’s done this before, please feel free to reach out or click here.

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