Why Marc Vetri Sold His Restaurant Empire to Urban Outfitters

Building a flourishing restaurant empire is probably one of the single hardest and most foolhardy voyages one can embark upon. Forget about global conquest or interdimensional travel—actually making a buck is a dream most restaurateurs will spend their entire lives chasing. Even if you were to persevere and retain your sanity long enough to make it to the top of the industry, you best believe that shit at the pinnacle isn't any easier. Hell, many an empire has capsized spectacularly in a mere moment of overexpansion or hesitation.

Marc Vetri is already one of the few exceptions to all of that—but he's taking his career to the next level in an unusual way. The Philadelphia-born-and-based chef and restaurateur has thoroughly rocked the culinary landscape with the announcement last Monday that he sold almost his entire restaurant group—Vetri Family— to, of all places, the clothing conglomerate Urban Outfitters. The multinational clothing corporation is said to have spent somewhere below $20 million on the deal and has acquired all of the group's restaurants, excluding the flagship, Vetri, which Marc Vetri will retain.

The unprecedented deal has people scratching their heads: are fashion-food-lifestyle conglomerates the way of the future? MUNCHIES was lucky enough to speak with Vetri and discuss aspects of a deal that could very well change the shape of the industry as we know it.

MUNCHIES: So, I think everyone is wondering why you decided to sell your restaurant group. It's something you have clearly poured a ridiculous amount of love and care into. Marc Vetri: Well, it just kind of seemed like the right match. We certainly weren't looking to sell. Why would you even look for [a deal like] this? This never really happens so it's not even an option. Nobody says, 'I'm gonna open up a bunch of restaurants and I'm gonna sell them.' It's not something you really think about … [We and Urban Outfitterss] started working together a lot and we started thinking of ways to do things together, and out of sheer luck it just kind of started working really well. And one day they were like, 'Why don't we just purchase you?' And we were like, 'Well, I don't know? What does that look like?' And we just started figuring out what that looks like. As far as how much input will I have, I will have the same amount. We're still running the restaurants. That's not really what they do. They know how to scale things, they know how to build things, they know how to find real estate, they know how to do a lot of things. And we know how to run restaurants. I think with the two of us coming together, it just makes an amazing company to move forward.

I can't really think of any other instances in which a restaurant group has merged with a clothing conglomerate. That's the thing about Urban. Everyone likes to say, 'Why does a clothing company make this kind of a merger?' But the fact is they are a furniture organization, they have a whole home area. They also own Terrain, where they sell outdoor furniture and knickknacks—they are really not only a clothing company. They sell a wide array of products. This [acquisition] just opens it up. What they have been able to do successfully through 30-plus years is to navigate the market and maneuver themselves into wise strategic decisions.

Do you see this as a trend in which restaurant groups are going to be looking to outsider companies to merge? I don't know. I guess that'll be up to us. I guess we'll set the model, and after we knock it out of the park I think everyone will follow suit. But it's going to be very hard to find a corporate organization with the forward-thinking of Urban Outfitters and a larger restaurant organization that thinks like us. So, I mean, who knows?

Did you actually sell your name to Urban Outfitters? Well, I still own Vetri restaurant, so I can open up more Vetris. But other than that, they own all of the other names. So I couldn't open up anything else.

What sort of synergy should we expect to see with these two companies working together? For example, having a Pizzeria Vetri built into an Urban Outfitters would make a lot of sense. Well, I think we're really going to start focusing on pizzerias—and we're not opening them up in Urban Outfitter stores, we're opening them up near Urban Outfitters, near Anthropologies, with many sort of freestanding stores. So the idea is basically to grow the pizzeria brand and then to look into some other café-style restaurants and then maybe to look into some of the other operations that we have and sort of do the math and see if they are scalable. But we really haven't made any plans as to what we're going to grow and how many of them [we'll create]. So it's all still in research mode now.

So what has the general reaction to the sale overall been? You're obviously taking a little bit of a risk, doing something a lot of restaurateurs haven't done before. The reaction has been awesome, for the most part. All of my restaurateur friends and chefs and everyone else thinks it's just an amazing idea and they're loving it—they've all just been very supportive and sending me emails and telling me how awesome it is. Aside from a few haters here and there—which is normal for everything, especially in my line of work—it's been probably a 97-percent positive reaction.

Have you had any concerns about how a corporation that doesn't have really any experience within the hospitality sector will treat your employees? Urban Outfitters has had some controversy in the past with employment practices, for example, accusations of firing employees and then hiring them back as freelancers so they don't have to pay benefits. Not at all, because we know them and we're down at the main offices there—they have over 2,000 workers there. And I'm there often. I see everyone, and I see how happy everyone is down there and I know their healthcare and vacation days, and I know how they are. They're just a really amazing company to work for. There have been a few negative articles [about Urban Outfitters], but there have been negative articles written about me also. I mean it's mostly hyperbole, someone who just, like, has an angry life and wants to write negative stuff about someone who's really doing amazing things. So I don't really listen to what these folks write about.

Do you see yourself splitting your time differently between the restaurants going forward? Do you think you'll be spending more time at Vetri or at the Urban headquarters? No, I'm just going to run the restaurants as I run them. I run back and forth amongst them in the mornings and I'll have meetings in the afternoons. Just normal. My life is, for the most part, not going to change very much at all. It's gonna just be more fun.

Thanks for speaking with me, Marc.