OneRyan Global Acquires Mr. Gatti's Pizza: A Dallas Family Office Bets on the Pizza Buffet's Second Act

When OneRyan Global announced a controlling interest in Mr. Gatti's Pizza on January 21, 2026, the deal barely registered as a blip in the national business press. The terms were not disclosed. The brand is not publicly traded. But for anyone watching how restaurant brands actually change hands in 2026, the transaction tells a story worth examining.

This was not a private equity rollup, not a strategic acquisition by a larger restaurant group, and not a distressed sale. It was a franchise operator buying the franchisor from the inside, converting local operational knowledge into ownership. That model is gaining traction across the industry, and Mr. Gatti's may be the clearest small-market example of what it looks like in practice.

Who OneRyan Global Is

OneRyan Global is the family investment office of Brint Ryan, chairman and CEO of Ryan LLC, the Dallas-based tax consulting firm that counts Fortune 500 companies among its clients and operates across more than 60 countries. Family offices at this level are designed for multi-generational wealth deployment, typically combining real estate, private equity stakes, and operating businesses into a single managed portfolio.

What makes this acquisition unusual is the path OneRyan took to get there. The firm was already a Mr. Gatti's franchisee before it became the owner. In October 2025, OneRyan acquired a corporate-owned Mr. Gatti's location in Austin, Texas. That transaction completed the chain's conversion to a fully franchised system, meaning every location in the network was now franchise-operated. Two months later, OneRyan closed on a controlling interest in the parent company itself.

With the acquisition, Brint Ryan takes the chairman seat and Amanda Ryan joins as vice chairwoman of the board. Critically, the existing operating leadership stays in place: Jim Phillips continues as CEO and KC Mann remains CFO. That is a deliberate choice. The Ryans are not installing new management to reshape operations from scratch. They are backing the team that already knows the brand.

The Franchisee-to-Franchisor Pattern

The structure of this deal reflects a broader pattern in restaurant M&A that has accelerated over the past two years. Operators who have spent years building familiarity with a brand's unit economics, supplier relationships, and customer base are increasingly the ones stepping into ownership positions when those brands become available.

The logic is straightforward: franchisees already know what drives profitability at the store level, what the brand's operational constraints are, and which levers actually move the needle. That information advantage is not trivial. Private equity firms typically spend six to twelve months in due diligence learning what a seasoned franchisee already knows from running the concept daily.

The most visible deals in this category have involved far larger sums. Jersey Mike's drew an $8 billion valuation when Blackstone acquired a majority stake in 2024. Dave's Hot Chicken was acquired by Roark Capital with franchise investors already embedded in the brand's ownership story. Subway completed its sale to Roark Capital in 2023 after more than a decade of franchisee relationships built across the system.

The Mr. Gatti's deal is smaller and quieter, but the structural logic is identical. OneRyan spent time learning the brand as an operator before converting that position into ownership. The Austin corporate location acquisition in October 2025 was likely both a strategic foothold and a due diligence mechanism, giving the family office direct exposure to the brand's daily operations before committing to a controlling stake.

What Mr. Gatti's Actually Is in 2026

Founded in Stephenville, Texas in 1969, Mr. Gatti's built its identity around the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet format. At its peak the chain operated hundreds of locations, primarily in Texas and the Southeast, and was a fixture of suburban family dining through the 1980s and 1990s. The brand has changed hands multiple times over the decades, surviving industry shifts that have steadily eroded the pizza buffet's market position.

Today the chain operates more than 200 active and forthcoming locations, still concentrated in Texas and the Southeastern United States. That footprint is meaningful for a regional concept, though modest compared to national pizza chains. Fort Worth, Texas serves as the corporate base.

The buffet format presents a specific set of economic challenges that have only grown more acute in recent years. Labor costs are structurally higher in buffet operations because maintaining food quality across a continuous service model requires more kitchen staff time than a standard pizza delivery or carryout operation. Food waste is a persistent issue. Delivery and off-premise revenue, which drove industry performance during and after the pandemic, is difficult to execute from a buffet-centric model.

Against those headwinds, the brand's survival to 200-plus locations is itself notable. Some regional buffet concepts have not made it this far.

The Walmart and Convenience Store Expansion Plan

The most operationally interesting element of OneRyan's announced growth strategy is the plan to open Mr. Gatti's units inside Walmart stores and convenience locations. The company has flagged non-traditional venue expansion as a core growth avenue.

Non-traditional locations have become a significant expansion lever across the industry over the past decade. Subway has long placed units inside Walmart stores. Auntie Anne's, Sbarro, and various quick-service concepts have established themselves in airports, travel centers, and big-box retail environments where captive traffic reduces customer acquisition costs and long-term lease terms tend to differ from standard street-side retail.

For Mr. Gatti's, the strategic rationale for Walmart and convenience store placement is both obvious and complicated. The obvious case: Walmart locations generate significant foot traffic, and a recognizable regional pizza brand can capture impulse lunch and dinner purchases from shoppers who are already in the building. Convenience store pizza is an established category, with brands like Hunt Brothers Pizza operating successfully in thousands of c-store locations across the country.

The complication is format compatibility. Mr. Gatti's core identity is the pizza buffet, which requires physical space, equipment investment, and operational staffing that a Walmart endcap or convenience store counter cannot easily accommodate. If the non-traditional locations operate as counter-service or grab-and-go pizza rather than full buffet, the brand is essentially running two different consumer propositions under the same name. That creates marketing complexity and risks diluting the buffet identity that distinguishes Mr. Gatti's from generic pizza options.

The alternative interpretation is that OneRyan is deliberately broadening the brand's format portfolio, treating the buffet as one channel and grab-and-go as another, similar to how some casual dining brands have experimented with fast-casual offshoots. That approach requires careful execution to avoid brand confusion but opens revenue channels that the traditional buffet model cannot reach.

The Family Office Model vs. Private Equity

The ownership structure matters as much as the strategy. Family offices and private equity firms approach restaurant ownership with fundamentally different incentive structures, and those differences shape how brands develop under each model.

Private equity firms typically operate on fund cycles of seven to ten years, with portfolio companies expected to generate returns that justify the fund's investor commitments. That time pressure creates specific operational incentives: accelerate unit growth to build enterprise value, optimize labor and food costs aggressively, and position for a sale or IPO that realizes the fund's return. The playbook can generate significant growth but also pushes brands toward short-term cost management that sometimes undermines long-term brand health.

Family offices do not have fund cycles. The Ryans are deploying their own capital, and the investment time horizon is effectively indefinite. That changes the calculus on almost every operational decision. A family office can choose to invest in remodels, employee wages, or menu quality without needing to justify the spend against a near-term exit. It can tolerate slower growth if the underlying unit economics are sound. It can prioritize brand integrity over unit count.

That is not universally better than private equity, but it is different in ways that can benefit brands with established identities that need patient capital rather than aggressive expansion. Mr. Gatti's, with its 57-year history and regional loyalty base, may be a better candidate for patient capital than for a PE-style roll-up.

The retention of Phillips and Mann in their executive roles reinforces this read. OneRyan is not coming in to rebuild operations from zero. The bet is that the existing team, now backed by a well-capitalized family office with direct operational experience in the brand, can execute a growth plan that previous ownership structures could not.

What Franchisees Should Watch

For the 200-plus locations currently operating under the Mr. Gatti's banner, the ownership change brings both reassurance and open questions. Existing leadership continuity is a positive signal. Franchisees who built their businesses under Phillips and Mann do not face an immediate management transition.

The non-traditional expansion strategy raises legitimate questions about how Walmart and c-store units will interact with the existing franchise system. If OneRyan develops its own non-traditional locations as company-owned units, that could limit the revenue opportunity for existing franchisees. If the expansion is offered to the franchise network, franchisees will need to evaluate whether the economics of a Walmart footprint work for their markets and capital structures.

The competitive environment for pizza has not eased. Domino's operates more than 6,800 domestic locations and has posted nine consecutive quarters of positive comparable sales growth. Pizza Hut is closing 250 locations in its ongoing system optimization. Papa Johns is in the middle of a turnaround effort that includes closing 300 locations to reduce its footprint. Independent pizzerias continue to fight for the premium customer with artisan positioning that chains cannot easily replicate.

In that environment, a 200-location regional brand needs a differentiated story. The pizza buffet format, despite its structural challenges, is genuinely differentiated. There are not many branded pizza buffets left at any meaningful scale. If OneRyan can stabilize operations, execute selective non-traditional expansion without diluting the core brand, and give the existing franchise network the support to improve unit-level economics, Mr. Gatti's has a survivable path.

The Broader Signal

The Mr. Gatti's acquisition is a small transaction by the standards of restaurant M&A in 2026. It will not move markets or reshape competitive dynamics at the national level. But it reflects something worth tracking: the growing number of cases where operators with real brand knowledge are the buyers rather than the sellers.

Family offices have become more active across the restaurant sector as traditional institutional investors have become more cautious about restaurant valuations after several difficult years for the industry. That capital, paired with operational expertise, represents a distinct ownership model that sits between the founder-operator and the institutional roll-up. It is neither perfectly aligned with franchisee interests nor indifferent to them.

How OneRyan executes the Mr. Gatti's bet over the next three to five years will provide a useful case study in whether patient, operator-informed capital can sustain a format that the broader market has largely written off. The pizza buffet has survived multiple ownership changes and multiple industry disruptions. The question is whether this one gives it what it needs to adapt, or whether the headwinds facing all-you-can-eat dining are simply too structural to overcome regardless of who owns the parent company.

Operators evaluating franchisee-to-franchisor transitions elsewhere in the industry should watch this one closely.