Benihana National Corp.

Product Details

Historical Context

Benihana was founded in 1964 on West 56th Street in New York City by 25-year-old Hiroaki Aoki, the father of Steve Aoki and Devon Aoki.

Aoki, a wrestler who had qualified for but did not attend the 1960 Summer Olympics, started the restaurant with $10,000 (equivalent to $78,906 in 2017) earned from driving an ice cream truck in Harlem. The first restaurant, Benihana of Tokyo, was named for the red safflower that was the name for the coffee shop owned by his parents in Tokyo.

Aoki's concept was for the meals to be theatrically prepared by a knife-wielding, joke-telling chef at a teppanyaki table surrounded by a wooden eating surface in front of the guests (Teppan meaning "steel grill" or "griddle" and yaki meaning "grilled" or "broiled"). It did not do well until early 1965, when Clementine Paddleford of the New York Herald Tribune gave it a rave review. The Beatles and Muhammad Ali were among the celebrities who then descended on the four-table restaurant.

Within a year Aoki opened a bigger restaurant that featured samurai armour, heavy wooden ceiling beams, and sliding shōji screens to provide some privacy.

In 1968, it opened its first restaurant outside of New York City in Chicago.

In 1976, Aoki brought in consultant Hardwicke Companies (its founder Charles H. Stein was the original developer of Six Flags Great Adventure as well as operated various New York restaurants including Tavern on the Green) as a partner to run the company. In 1980, Aoki terminated the relationship and settled a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission complaint of insider trading of Hardwicke stock.

In 1982, Benihana National Corporation went public with Joel Schwartz as president. Some of the restaurants continued to be privately owned by Aoki. The company had some missteps including the opening of the upscale Big Splash restaurant and a frozen food division Benihana National Classics. Its stock dived and shareholders sued over management including the fact that Aoki still had his privately held restaurants of the same name.

In 1995, the company acquired 17 restaurants from Benihana of Tokyo.

In 2004, the company issued a class of preferred stock to BFC Financial corporation to renovate its restaurants and expand. The stock diluted Aoki's control of the chain and the family sued, citing that Benihana had no compelling need for the cash, other forms of capital were available, and that the terms of the preferred stock issued to BFC were onerous. A member of the board of directors was also a director of BFC, a company that held controlling interests in BankAtlantic, Blue Green, and Levitt Homes. However, the Delaware Court of Chancery upheld the decision.

Aoki died in 2008 at the age of 69.

Benihana agreed in 2012 to be purchased by the private equity firm of Angelo Gordon & Company for $296 million.

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