Breaking a Few Eggs

Founders can give their companies a lot of charm and personality-but is that always a good thing? It's the question facing Eggs Up Grill, a quirky breakfast spot that now has private equity owners, a CEO from TGI Fridays, a mandate to grow, and a delicate balance to strike.

- By Clint Carter

After the papers had been signed and the hands shaken, Skip Corn turned to his partner, Chris Skodras. I don't want to go cry in front of my wife, Corn said in his distinct Southern drawl. But I can cry in front of you.

And he did. So did Skodras. We cried every day for six months, says Corn, 70. To hand your baby off to somebody-it's a traumatic experience.

Over more than a decade, these two friends had built a 24-unit franchise diner called Eggs Up Grill. They wanted their restaurants to have small-town charm, so they ran the company with a small-town ethos. Everything was done with love and gut instinct. They answered the phones; they solved franchisees' problems. They insisted that every franchisee also work in their restaurant so customers could come and shake the owner's hand. And now Skodras and Corn had gone and sold the majority of their company to a private equity group, the kind of buyer that's often demonized for slash-and-burn, profit-at-all-costs tactics.

Tears were understandable.

But so far, at least, Eggs Up is not looking like a private equity horror story. Instead, it's looking like something far less dramatic, but a lot more common and instructive. It's a tale of what happens when a company becomes too big for its founders and more experienced operators come in to wrestle with its full potential. The private equity group that bought Eggs Up Grill is called WJ Partners, and it has some experience in this game. It acquired Pure Barre in 2012 and eventually sold the fitness studio to bigger investors; by the time WJ fully exited in 2018, Pure Barre had exploded from 96 to more than 500 locations.