Carlson Restaurants to Buy Pick Up Stix

Pick Up Stix Inc., a San Clemente chain of fresh wok-cooked Chinese food, said its owners have agreed to sell the company to Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, a global restaurant company that operates such chains as T.G.I. Friday’s.

Terms were not disclosed.

Charles Zhang, who owns more than 90% of privately held Pick Up Stix, and nearly all of the company’s 1,300 executives and employees will remain with the company after it becomes a subsidiary of Carlson Restaurants, a unit of Carlson Cos. in Dallas.

The deal is expected to close at the end of the month, said Pick Up Stix spokeswoman Roxann Pope.

The company began 13 years ago with a Stix restaurant in Laguna Niguel and has since grown to one Stix and 51 Pick Up Stix locations in California and Nevada.