Dinah Wisenberg Brin | September 12, 2012
Guillermo Perales, one of the largest restaurant franchisees in the U. S., isn't content to buy one or two locations in a given market. He prefers to own all of them.
His Dallas-based company, Sun Holdings LLC, is doubling in size this year to nearly 400 stores, including 96 Burger Kings that he recently acquired in the Orlando-Daytona market and more than 50 Arby's in Dallas, representing 99 percent and 100 percent of those markets, respectively.
The biggest Latino franchisee in the country and fourth-largest U.S. Burger King franchisee, Perales, 50, who was born in Mexico, also owns 85 percent of the chain's Dallas market and is in the process of remodeling locations in Florida and Texas.
And there's more: Perales owns all of the Popeyes in Dallas – he's that chain's second-largest franchisee -- and 90 percent of the CiCi's restaurants in Houston. His holdings also include 33 Golden Corral restaurants, the company he chose when he opened his first franchise with a Small Business Administration loan in 1997.
Why the interest in snapping up so many locations in the same cities?
"When you have the whole market you can do what you think is the right thing," Perales says. Owning the market allows you to close, move and build stores, and to set uniform pricing and promotions without ruffling the feathers of customers who notice different deals at different locations, or have disagreements with other franchisees, he explains.
"It's only one price, one promotion, one message," Perales says.