Sydney-based family business Chargrill Charlie’s has been sold to the Hong Kong-owned Craveable Brands in a deal set to be completed by 30 June 2023. Craveable Brands is 100% owned by the Hong Kong-based private equity group PAG Asia Capital, and is also the owners of Australian fast-food chicken brands Red Rooster and Oporto.
Chargrill Charlie’s owners, the Sher family, commenced the business in 1989 when the founders emigrated from South Africa and bought a chicken shop in the beachside Sydney suburb of Coogee. Over the subsequent 30+ years the family has slowly grown the number of stores, primarily in NSW but extending to Victoria. In a 2017 interview, co-owner, second gen Ryan Sher said “For us, opening hundreds of stores is not the goal. We are family run business and want a slow sustained growth so our standards and culture do not diminish. That is what drives me and makes me happy.”
This contrasts with the sale announcement in May 2023 where Ryan’s cousin Saul Sher said “there was no doubt that Chargrill Charlie’s would one day have stores in every state and be a much larger business”. A complete 180 degree shift no doubt prompted by a very large financial outcome for the Sher family.
This is in no way critical of the Sher family who no doubt would have received many sale proposals from various public companies and private equity outfits over recent years given it’s enviable branding. Family businesses often reach a point, particularly when the founders no longer have day-to-day involvement, when they have to consider “what’s next”, and when the path is unclear they become susceptible to big money offers from cashed-up investors. Unfortunately in many cases these investors consider the inherent family culture somewhat disposable in the main aim of maximising the value of their investment, as we have seen many times in Australian business. We can only hope that the famous quality focus experienced by the thousands of loyal Chargrill Charlie’s customers over the past three decades will not be a casualty.
What Craveable Brands will do next is anybody’s guess, but give that parent company PAG Asia Capital has owned it since 2019, and private equity investors typically have a short (up to 5 years) investment timeframe, it would be no surprise to see Craveable Brands itself on the sale block in the next year, via either an IPO or sale to a retail-focussed public company. Based on the 2022 Craveable Brands financials, such a transaction could realise in excess of $1 billion, well in excess of the reported $450 million paid by PAG Asia Capital in 2019.
Robert Powell FCA GAICD is the founder and Managing Director of Family Boards Pty Limited, a specialist consultancy helping family companies achieve best practice in board governance and risk management. He an accredited specialist adviser member of Family Business Association (AU), a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand.