The reign of the North Coast's fast-food king is coming to a close.


After 28 years of operating Burger King restaurants, Francisco Foods is planning to sell its seven hamburger joints in Sonoma and Marin to a whopper of a company.

"Basically we're selling out to one of the largest Burger King franchisees on the planet," said Geoff Jones, president of the Petaluma-based company.

The restaurants are being sold to a division of Cerberus Capital Management, a New York-based private equity firm that owns more than 250 Burger Kings.

Jones' father-in-law, Stan Kubu, opened his first Burger King restaurant in 1980 on Santa Rosa's Farmers Lane. Jones and his wife, Susan Kubu-Jones, helped grow the company into a chain that peaked in 1997 at 11 restaurants in the North Bay. Today it employs about 180 people.

Since 1997, economic pressures have forced the company to shutter four locations -- most recently the Burger King on Mendocino Avenue across from Santa Rosa High School, which closed a year ago.

The company closed the Farmers Lane location in 2000, and also shut its restaurant inside Scandia in Rohnert Park and a location in downtown San Rafael.

That leaves it today with five remaining restaurants in Sonoma County and two in Marin.

But high rents, increasing salaries and the business requirements imposed by the Burger King Corp. have squeezed profits, Jones said.

"If the salary you pay your people isn't covered by the food you sell, you don't have to be a rocket scientist," Jones said. "It's a classic margin squeeze."

The company borrowed $1 million in 2000 to upgrade some of the restaurants, and that debt has been difficult to shoulder, Jones said.

Policies set by the Miami-based parent company have also made operations difficult. One would require all stores to open at 6 a.m. and remain open until 2 a.m.

While that might work for some areas, it's not something that makes sense for Jones' locations, he said.

"They make decisions on a national scale, not on a Sonoma County scale," Jones said.

From its founding in Miami in 1954, Burger King has grown to become the second-largest hamburger chain in the world, behind McDonald's.

It had 11,300 restaurants around the world at the end of 2007, 90 percent of which were owned by franchisees. It opened 442 new restaurants last year, 92 in the United States and Canada.

The restaurants are being sold to Strategic Restaurants Acquisition Corp. of San Ramon. The deal is expected to close next month.

The company is a division of Cerberus, the massive private equity firm that last year purchased struggling automaker Chrysler. The company is named for the three-headed dog from Greek mythology that guarded the gates of Hell.

The division owns more than 250 Burger King restaurants in six states. Cerberus does not plan to close the locations, but rather invest in them and help them thrive, Jones said.

He declined to disclose the sale price, but said the sale is not making him rich and the price is "probably half of what it would have been 20 years ago."

"The guy that owns Burger Kings doesn't live in the mansion in Fountaingrove," he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com.