Yard House
Yard House, launched in 1996 in Long Beach, California, is an award-winning dining destination known for its menu of American favorites, crafted cocktails, and a seemingly endless fleet of tap handles featuring the best domestic craft and import beers. Each Yard House location features an exhibition kitchen and a glass-enclosed keg room showcasing nearly 4,000 gallons of beer that flows to the center-island bar. Yard House is also well-known for its music– boasting a library of 10,000 songs –with each location having its own distinct playlist.
Our Partnership
We identified Yard House as a highly differentiated restaurant concept and ultimately partnered with the business in 2007 after developing relationships with its founders. We were attracted to Yard House for its upscale-casual positioning and unique selection of high-quality beverage and food offerings that drove broad appeal and highly differentiated store-level economics. It was clear to us that there was an opportunity to expand Yard House nationwide.
Strategic Focus
We worked closely with Yard House to drive significant value creation across multiple areas. Traffic-generating marketing and menu-engineering initiatives accelerated growth and enhanced brand loyalty, while a newly developed site selection process utilizing demographic modeling helped identify the most attractive future locations. We also worked closely with Yard House to optimize purchasing and national supply chain relationships, as well as to establish analytical reporting and budgeting processes to improve day-to-day operating visibility.
Demonstrated Impact
Yard House rapidly expanded under our ownership, transforming from a Southern California-based concept with 16 locations to a national brand with 39 restaurants across 13 states. New locations opened under our stewardship generated higher sales and increased ROI versus existing locations. In 2012, Yard House was sold to Darden, the world’s largest full-service restaurant company.
“Our successful partnership with TSG has been nothing short of extraordinary. TSG recognized our potential early on and their dedication, support and guidance to our team and our company have proven to be extremely valuable.”
— Harald Herrmann, Yard House CEO
