Edible Arrangements Founder Buys Back Ownership Stake Amid Brand Conversion

Tariq Farid, the founder and CEO of Wallingford-based Edible Arrangements, has bought back an ownership stake that he sold to a Greenwich private equity firm five years ago, the franchiser said Monday.

Terms of the deal, including the percentage of the company that was owned by the firm, L Catterton, were not announced.

Farid co-founded the company in 1999 in East Haven with his brother, Kamran. In 2012, after years of rapid growth and expansion to more than 1,200 franchised locations in the United States and 14 foreign countries, including China and India, Farid brought in the Greenwich firm, then known as Catterton Partners.

Catterton owned a minority stake. With the transaction announced Monday, the Farid family regains full ownership of the company at a moment that Tariq Farid described as a turning point.

“The timing was perfect,” he said. “because we’re in the middle of converting our brand and we’ve got a great track record.”

The conversion involves adding fresh fruit smoothies, fruit dipped in chocolate, frozen yogurt blends, fruit salads and coffee-fruit drinks at the stores, under the “Edible to Go” platform.

Edible Arrangements, which makes and delivers sculpted fruit bouquets, now has more than 1,300 locations including 35 in Connecticut, with 265 employees at the headquarters, including a call center for orders.

About 500 of the stores have added those to-go options so far, and some have moved to more prominent locations. “We’ve spent a lot of time proving the model out,” Farid said.

Growth in the number of stores has continued over the last five years, but at a slower pace than earlier, Farid said, because of the focus on the relaunch of the brand. That has required an investment by franchisees.

“It’s really not a hard sell because everybody’s doing it,” Farid said, speaking of drink offerings “For us it’s natural. We had a cooler full of fruit in our stores every single day that we were moving through the back of the store.”

The core business will remain arrangements as the company seeks to expand by about 70 locations per year, he said.

In 2014, Farid bought an Atlanta company formerly known as eMaximation, which sells software to automate franchise-buyer recruitment and now has staff in Connecticut. He renamed it Naranga.

Edible opened a flagship store last year at its Wallingford headquarters, which it later converted to a company-owned training store when a franchise opened nearby in Meriden.

Farid said he brought in Catterton in 2012 for the firm’s ability to help Edible become more sophisticated, for its expertise in retail and for high-level contacts. He declined to say whether he paid more for the stake in the business — Edible Brands LLC — than Catterton paid in 2012. But he said, “the company has done well,” with a 17-year record of annual increases in same-store sales.

Private equity firms typically seek an exit from their investments after several years. Farid said he didn’t want to go the route of an initial public stock offering, which might have been an option for a company of Edible’s size, total system-wide sales of about $600 million a year.

“When you’ve got a good thing going, why mess it up? We’re in the middle of a major conversion from the way we started to this new journey. I want to complete that,” he said.

“The challenge has always been a long-term journey rather than a short-term burst.”

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