Content area
Full Text
After filing bankruptcy earlier this month and closing seven restaurants, the Noon Mediterranean concept is reworking its menu and focusing on its staff.
So said the New York-based chain’s CEO Stefan Boyd, who stepped into the role Aug. 1 after former CEO Michael Heyne and co-founder Dominik Stein left the company.
Boyd said the two co-founders still hold a small stake in the fast-casual Mediterranean chain they first opened as VertsKebap in Austin, Texas, in 2011. The decision to part ways with Heyne and Stein was “mutual,” Boyd said.
Heyne, however, said he and Stein had offered to “save the company money and step into a passive position” as advisors. “But it was decided we were not needed,” he said.
Since late 2017, the chain’s largest shareholders include a group of investors from Germany who injected $8.5 million and rebranded the concept as Noon Mediterranean, shifting the corporate headquarters to New York and broadening the menu.
“They wanted to evolve it,” said Boyd, who worked previously in the finance world with J.P. Morgan but has been with the restaurant chain in various leadership roles since early 2017.
Part of that evolution was moving away from the “meat cones,” or rotisserie meats, that once defined the original döner kebab...