3 Restaurant Chains’ Owner Discussing Sale

Irvine-based Restaurant Enterprises Group, which owns the El Torito, Bob’s Big Boy and Charley Brown’s restaurant chains, recently met with a group of potential buyers to discuss the possible sale of all or a portion of its assets.

According to Restaurant Enterprises’ first-quarter financial report, filed this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company; representatives of W.R. Grace Corp., which formerly owned the restaurants; company bondholders and other creditors, including Marriott Corp., met with interested buyers on May 5.

While no formal agreements were reached, the parties addressed “various acquisition and restructuring proposals” and intend to continue discussions.

Such a sale of Restaurant Enterprises’ assets had been earlier rumored, and the company confirmed in March that it had been approached by several unidentified buyers.

Restaurant Enterprises, which is struggling to restructure its highly leveraged debt load, had a net loss of $8.3 million on $165.3 million in sales for the first quarter, compared to a net loss of $10.1 million on $223.8 million for the same period in 1992.