Nestlé Toll House Café, a franchised chain of cookie stores frequently found in malls and food courts, is being sold to a new parent company amid a years-long decline in sales. Unfortunately, that also means the end of the road for the dessert café and its 85 nationwide locations.
FAT Brands, which owns Johnny Rockets and Fazoli's, among others, has acquired Nestlé Toll House Café in an undisclosed deal. The company announced it will be converting all of the Café locations into Great American Cookies, a 370-unit gourmet cookie chain it already has in its portfolio.The multi-brand restaurant operator also owns 75 locations of ice-cream chain Marble Slab Creamery and is looking to boost its dessert category.
"These stores will fold seamlessly into our quick-service division and provide us the opportunity to increase the capacity of our manufacturing business, a key growth objective," said Fat Brands CEO Andy Wiederhorn in aNestlé Toll House Café has been suffering from a decline in foot traffic at malls and other shopping areas where it has a presence.
All locations of Nestlé Toll House Café will be rebranded by the end of the year, a process during which Crest's franchisees will become operators under Fat Brand's system and will be required to stop selling any products associated with Nestlé.during the first quarter of 2022, thanks to several major acquisitions it made in 2021.