Corner Bakery growth plans include Ocean State

ROUND THE CORNER: A Corner Bakery Cafe location in California. Six shops are slated to open in Rhode Island. / COURTESY CORNER BAKERY
ROUND THE CORNER: A Corner Bakery Cafe location in California. Six shops are slated to open in Rhode Island. / COURTESY CORNER BAKERY

When restaurateur and Rhode Island-raised Glenn Beattie returns to the state next year, he will be bringing the Corner Bakery Cafe with him.
An agreement between Beattie’s company, Top Line Restaurants, and Corner Bakery calls for 16 breakfast and lunch cafés in Connecticut and six in Rhode Island, with the first location scheduled to open locally within a year.
According to Texas-based Corner Bakery, the new restaurants will boost the regional economy by adding more than 800 jobs in the two states over the next eight years. Each restaurant is planned to be about 4,000 square feet, with indoor seating for 125 and outdoor patio space for another 25 customers. Each store averages 30 to 50 employees.
Top Line Restaurants has exclusive rights to open Corner Bakery outlets in both states. Rhode Island locations have yet to be determined.
Of approximately 130 Corner Bakery locations nationally, a handful are situated in New York and New Jersey. The chain is concentrated mostly in the southern and western United States, in places such as Texas, Colorado, Illinois and Florida.
A graduate of Toll Gate High School in Warwick, Beattie also studied at Providence College for three years before dropping out of school after receiving an invitation to become a Denny’s franchisee. In 1990, Beattie started with three Denny’s Restaurant locations in Arizona.
In 2007, he purchased four Denny’s in Florida but soon sold those. In 2009 he, along with business partner and wife, Tina, purchased 28 more Denny’s in New York.
Now he plans to march into Rhode Island with a new commercial venture.
“Everything I’ve done up until now has been Denny’s. Denny’s has been very good to me; it’s been strong in the family dining segment,” said Beattie. Looking for an opportunity in another segment of the restaurant industry a few years ago, he discovered the “fast casual” segment, where the only national player appeared to be Panera Bread. “There are more than 1,500 in the country and they are doing phenomenal. After a lot of research I discovered Corner Bakery,” he said. The Corner Bakery Cafe was founded on a philosophy of creating a place for people to relax or gather. “They work on the same model as Denny’s in that they have a real strong breakfast [market]” Beattie said. “By far their biggest business is lunch, where they bring in about 60 percent of their overall business,” he said. “I fell in love with the concept – the food, the décor, the whole package.”
Most of Top Line’s growth has been in the western New York market, where he continues to add one or two Denny’s stores each year. “We started to talk about areas of the country we would like to develop, and Rhode Island and Connecticut looked like a good area,” he said. After discussions with Ric Scicchitano, Corner Bakery senior vice president for food and beverages, Beattie was won over by the company’s brand and message.
“Corner Bakery Cafe is currently partnered with 19 franchise groups that have committed to opening more than 250 restaurants over the next eight years,” explained Jonathan Benjamin, the Corner Bakery’s vice president of franchise sales. “We look forward to working with the Beatties and continuing to expand our presence in the Northeast.”
Starting as a small-bread bakery on a corner in downtown Chicago and growing to a national player of the dining segment, Corner Bakery was acquired by Roark Capital Group in 2011. Roark Capital plans to double its 130 café locations in 14 states over the next three years.
According to Mike Hislop, CEO of Corner Bakery, there are several untapped markets in the Northeast that are ideal for the company. “We’ve perfected the Corner Bakery Cafe business model by running company-owned cafés for more than 20 years and know that our brand caters well to the dense populations and family focused lifestyles in Connecticut and Rhode Island,” he said in a statement. •

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