A company with a large number of Korean barbecue restaurants is selling its locations, including those in Texas, to a fast-growng U.S. hospitality group. The Los Angeles-based GEN Restaurant Group announced Wednesday the signing of a binding letter of intent to sell operations of 47 GEN Korean BBQ House restaurants to Chubby Group for $100 million.
The sale, which will reduce about $160 million in lease liabilities for GEN Restaurant Group, may include all 12 locations of GEN Korean BBQ House in Texas.
Chubby, which was founded in 2016 with Chubby Cattle Hotpot in Las Vegas, focuses on Chinese and Mongolian hot pot, but has since expanded into Japanese cooking. Their various concepts can be found throughout California, New York and other busy U.S. hubs; in Houston, Chubby operates the all-you-can-eat shabu-shabu restaurant Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House in Chinatown and the all-you-can-eat Wagyu House inside the Galleria.
There are three GEN locations in the Houston area: over in the Briar Forest part of the city, in Midtown, and down in Webster. There are also two GEN locations in the Austin area, five in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, and one each in El Paso and Waco.
GEN will retain the GEN brand in the sale, along with about three restaurants “to support training, staffing, and CPG (consumer packaged goods) research and development.” It’s unclear which restaurants will stay with GEN Restaurant Group.
“Acquiring these 47 restaurants gives Chubby an established, high-traffic platform to accelerate our national growth,” said Chubby Group Founder David Zhao. “GEN has built one of the leading Korean BBQ brands in the U.S. As we take over operations, we will build on the Korean BBQ experience these guests know with a wagyu-forward menu, and we are committed to completing this acquisition and executing a disciplined, phased transition.”
Along with potentially acquiring the operations of the GEN restaurants, Chubby is moving full steam ahead on several concepts in Texas. The company’s website shows Austin and San Antonio locations of Chubby Cattle are “coming soon.”