Go to any website where commercial real estate is listed and try to find a restaurant for sale or lease. You will likely produce a list of retail centers, not a list of restaurants.
Addressing the issue, industry veteran Andy Anderson has formed Restaurant Properties Group to provide specialized services to investors, owners, and occupants of restaurant real estate.
“Historically, the commercial real estate industry overall has considered restaurants to be part of the retail sector,” Anderson told D CEO. “I feel this is a mistake. Restaurants, just as an office, retail, or industrial real estate, is its own animal and needs to be treated as such.”
Restaurant Properties intends to be a single place to find restaurant property information. Anderson said they would use multiple inbound channels to find available restaurant property, which will then be provided to their tenant and buyer clients through a proprietary database of available spaces and properties.
On the landlord and seller side, the company’s marketing channels are specifically designed for restaurant real estate.
“My intention when forming RP was to be the one-stop-shop for restaurant real estate services for tenants, buyers, landlords, and investors,” Anderson said.
Anderson has enlisted Brad Kempson to handle RP’s landlord services nationwide.
Kempson has more than 30 years of retail development experience, including leasing, contract negotiations, site selection, and tenant mix strategies. Before joining RPG, Kempson served as Executive Vice President at Stonebrook Partners.
Before forming Restaurant Properties Group, Anderson was a vice president of Henry S. Miller Brokerage, one of the largest independent commercial real estate firms in the state. He also previously served as vice president and subsequently president of ACRES, a private real estate company specializing in retail, office, and industrial property brokerage nationwide and in Mexico.
To support all parties involved in a transaction, Restaurant Properties Group has moved toward a new lease structure with a force majeure clause–broadened to include catastrophic health events such as the current COVID-19 pandemic–that protects both landlord and tenant.
“As far as leasing goes, we are still making deals,” said Anderson. “However, in our recent lease negotiations, we’ve had to push for a shift in the customary lease structure, specifically the force majeure clause.
“There has to be a mutual understanding between landlords and tenants that the force majeure language customarily contained in leases, which was intended to protect only landlords, needs to be changed. Now, both the landlord and the tenant must be protected in a force majeure event. Furthermore, the definition of a force majeure event needs to be broadened to include infectious diseases, such as COVID-19.”
On the sales side, Anderson anticipates contracts will need to adopt and include the same modified force majeure language mentioned above concerning performance timelines contained in a sale contract that governs both parties.
