Restaurant Franchisee NPC Gets Green Light To Sell Pizza Hut, Wendy’s For $800 Million

Restaurant franchisee NPC International won court approval to sell 1,300 Pizza Hut and Wendy’s locations for around $800 million, Bloomberg reported. The news comes months after the pandemic forced the company into bankruptcy.

There were two deals approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones Wednesday (Jan. 20). Flynn Restaurant Group will take over 951 Pizza Hut locations and almost 200 Wendy’s stores, Bloomberg reported. Wendy’s Co. will take over another 200 of the eponymous restaurants and turn them over to some of its franchisees.

NPC filed for bankruptcy last year, Bloomberg reported, and at that time it owned over 1,200 Pizza Huts and almost 400 Wendy’s restaurants. Both eateries had been involved in negotiating the sale.

There was an attempt in November by NPC to auction off the restaurants, but that was nixed when NPC didn’t think the offers it was getting were high enough, Bloomberg reported. After that, the company entered into settlement talks, which led to the current deal.

Pizza Hut had to close somewhere around 300 locations last year, PYMNTS reported, with the deal made by NPC to sell many of them leading to that decision.

The decision came from a bankruptcy agreement between NPC and Yum Brands, which operates the pizza chain. The agreement said that NPC would pay Pizza Hut to close some of the locations, while the remaining 927 would be sold.

“Today’s joint agreement to close up to 300 NPC Pizza Hut restaurants is an important step toward a healthier business … the locations significantly underperform the rest of NPC’s Pizza Hut system,” Pizza Hut said in a statement at the time, PYMNTS reported.

The 1,227 locations owned by NPC were one-fifth of the total Pizza Hut locations.

PYMNTS reported that the majority of the locations closed were red roof locations, which the company was trying to leave behind as it transitioned to a delivery and takeout model.