When Amol Kohli started working at a Philadelphia-area Friendly’s as a waiter in 2003, he was a restless sophomore in high school hoping to make some pocket change.
Kohli made about $5 an hour at the diner-style restaurant chain, doing any job his manager needed, he tells CNBC Make It. On any given day, he was a cook, a dishwasher, a table busser, an ice cream scooper, you name it.
More than two decades later, Kohli added another Friendly’s job title to his resume: Owner. On July 22, Kohli’s investment group Legacy Brands announced its acquisition of the entire Friendly’s chain — which has locations in most states on the U.S. eastern coast — plus its parent company Brix Holdings and six other restaurant brands, for an undisclosed amount.
The deal marked a culmination of sorts for Kohli, 37, who has now spent most of his life working at Friendly’s in some capacity. Even while attending Drexel University — where he double majored in finance and marketing — Kohli spent his summers working five to six days per week at Friendly’s, learning more about the ins and outs of the business as time went on, he says.
“I started supporting a couple franchisees and just started learning what happens after the money makes its way into the register,” says Kohli. “Learning about insurance, payroll, food costs and all these other things. I did that all through college.”
Kohli graduated with honors in 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile, and chose to take a Friendly’s regional manager position instead of pursuing a career in finance, he says. A few years later, he applied to take over a closing franchise location. Licensing, contracting, and equipment for the store cost around “a quarter of a million dollars,” including credit, money from Kohli’s savings and funds he got from friends and business partners, he says.
“That’s how my franchising career started. And from there, it just never stopped,” says Kohli, who eventually franchised 31 Friendly’s locations before buying the brand outright.
Kohli’s path to owning his one-time employer started with plummeting sales at Friendly’s during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2020, and announced plans to be acquired by Dallas-based franchising company Brix Holdings for just under $2 million. The deal was finalized in 2021.
In May, Kohli founded his own investment group, Legacy Brands International, with a sole purpose: Acquire Brix Holdings. He funded his investment group “through a mix of both capital (equity) and debt financing,” a spokesperson says.
The creation of Legacy Brands International was the result of “a combination of a lot of stars aligning, the right people supporting, faith, and a lot of goodwill that all got cashed in at one time,” says Kohli. And his long track record with the company made him “the ideal candidate for ownership,” Brix founder John Antioco said in a statement when the deal was announced.
Kohli is now a franchisor who owns, but doesn’t operate, the other 60-plus Friendly’s restaurant locations in the U.S., a company spokesperson says. As a result of the deal, Kohli’s company also now owns Clean Juice, Orange Leaf, Red Mango, Smoothie Factory + Kitchen, Souper Salad, and Humble Donut Co. The entire portfolio includes more than 250 restaurant locations.
The ascent from entry-level Friendly’s employee to chairman of Brix’s board of directors is “unbelievable,” says Kohli. Yet he faces a challenge reviving a brand with dwindling locations, he adds — just over 100 today, down from more than 800 in the mid-1990s.
More broadly, chain eateries have reported declining sales amid inflation and a shaky economic environment that’s caused many consumers to rethink how often they want to spend money at a sit-down restaurant.
Kohli aims to modernize the brands he oversees, leaning on technology like a recently revamped Friendly’s mobile app, Kohli told Nation’s Restaurant News in August. He also hopes to attract new franchisees, using his own career trajectory can prove to be a selling point, he now says.
Specifically, he wants people to see restaurant and food service roles as opportunities to establish a long-term career and start building wealth, not just dead-end jobs or gigs you ditch after graduation, he says. His particular path is rare, but not completely unique: Former IHOP CEO Julia Stewart was a waitress at IHOP as a teenager before eventually leading the brand from 2002 to 2017.
“Some of the people that are on my executive team now were dishwashers and cooks,” Kohli says. “This is one of the few [industries] in the entire world that you can literally start from that level and work your way up to a CEO or executive.”
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