Private label and contract food manufacturer Cheeze Kurls has been acquired by Kilroy Partners.
Cheeze Kurls’ products include extruded, fried, and baked products as well as popcorn and party mixes which are sold to retail, grocery, drugstore, wholesale, and discount retailers nationwide. Cheeze Kurls is headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan and operates out of a 140,000 square foot facility.
The company was founded in 1964 by Edward DeDinas and Robert Franzak and acquired by their sons – President Timothy Dedinas and Vice President Robert Franzak – in 1999. Since then, the company has expanded multiple times. According to Mr. Franzak, another expansion is needed now, one of the factors that helped prompt the company’s sale.
With the closing of the transaction, Messrs. DeDinas and Franzak will retain a minority ownership in the company and will remain active as advisors.
“Kilroy Partners is the right buyer for Cheeze Kurls, the company’s future and its employees,” said Mr. Franzak. “When we met with them, they provided a vision for what they wanted to do with the company and how they wanted to expand. The key thing for us was Kilroy keeping the employees we had on hand at the time. Other potential buyers in the past have proposed closing our plant and moving operations out of state. Not so with Kilroy.”
Boca Raton-based Kilroy Partners makes control investments of up to $30 million in entrepreneurial, family-owned and non-institutionally controlled businesses. Typical target companies will have revenues of up to $150 million, positive or negative EBITDA, and enterprise values of up to $75 million. Sectors of interest include aerospace and defense, automotive suppliers, niche manufacturing and services, food manufacturing, and transportation and logistics.
NuVescor Group was the financial advisor to Cheese Kurls on this transaction. “It is always exciting to work with businesses in West Michigan, and to be able to assist a company that has such a long history in Michigan was an honor,” said Randy Rua, managing partner at NuVescor. “We were able to find a buyer that will continue the growth trend in West Michigan which was very important to Tim and Bob.”
Private Equity Professional | September 11, 2020
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