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Plots full-service restaurant growth
NEW YORK - With its National Restaurants Management Inc. subsidiary newly emerged from a prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the Riese Organization is pushing ahead with several high-profile projects scheduled to debut later this year.
Riese - the largest operator of quick-service and dinnerhouse brands in metropolitan New York - is planning to open a large full-service restaurant near Madison Square Garden and Penn Station, and a more upscale venture in the Times Square area with veteran radio and television personality Joe Franklin.
The Manhattan-based company also opened the sixth branch of its budget-priced Tad's Steaks restaurant in a food court in the Tunes Square district earlier this month.
The Riese Organization operates about 110 restaurants in the city, including T.G.I. Friday's, Houlihan's, Tad's, Pizza Hut, KFC, Nathan's Famous, Roy Rogers and Dunkin' Donuts. Foodservice sales for the company hit an estimated $120 million for the year ended April 2000.
The stepped-up expansion for the 60-year-old Riese Organization follows closely on the heels of a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge's confirmation on July 26 of the NRMI subsidiary's second amended Chapter 11 reorganization plan.
In addition to retiring a debt load that totaled nearly $200 million at one time, the restructuring allowed president and chief executive Dennis Riese to buy out his two cousins' stake in NRMI, leaving him with 100 percent of the company's voting stock.
"This is a great day in my life," Riese said. "The company is now totally debt free."
According to the reorganization plan, Riese settled the claim of its chief creditor, ALGM LLC by classifying about...