Lenders Took Johnny Rockets Owner FAT Brands After a Billion Collapse and Renamed It With One Loaded Word

FAT Brands filed bankruptcy owing more than a billion dollars to its own lenders.

Those same lenders just took full control of the company and its twelve restaurant chains.

They picked a brand new name for FAT Brands and the choice says more than they probably meant it to.

The Billion Dollar Shopping Spree That Buried the Company

FAT Brands borrowed almost a billion dollars between 2020 and 2023, loading up on restaurant chains that eventually included Johnny Rockets, Fazoli's, Twin Peaks, and Hot Dog on a Stick.

Founder Andy Wiederhorn financed the buying binge with whole-business securitizations, a form of debt that bundles a company's future franchise royalties and sells them off to investors like a bond.

By January 2026 the bill came due, and FAT Brands filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy carrying somewhere north of a billion dollars in debt it could not service.

Wiederhorn gave up his role in the company during the proceedings, and relatives who held jobs and board seats inside the company lost them too.

By June 2026, the bankruptcy court had sorted out who would walk away with the pieces.

A Lender Group Bought the Wreckage and Called It Honest

On June 18, 2026, a group of lenders operating as FBG Bid Co. closed a $595 million deal for the core portfolio: Round Table Pizza, Fatburger, Johnny Rockets, Fazoli's, Marble Slab Creamery, Pretzelmaker, Great American Cookies, Buffalo's Cafe and Express, Hurricane Grill & Wings, Native Grill & Wings, and the Ponderosa and Bonanza steakhouse chains, covering more than 1,700 restaurants.

Twin Peaks sold off separately to a different lender group for $359.5 million, Hot Dog on a Stick went for $8 million, and Elevation Burger found a buyer in Kuwait for $2.5 million.

Smokey Bones did not survive the sale at all and was simply liquidated.

The new owners took the summer to decide what to call a company built out of someone else's bankruptcy, and on October 1, 2026, they announced their answer.

FAT Brands is gone, and in its place stands OHG Brands, which the company says stands for Original, Honest, Good.

The Word Choice Nobody at the Company Seems to Have Flagged

A restaurant group that just emerged from a billion-dollar collapse, a founder pushed out the door, and a securitization scheme that left bondholders holding the bag chose the word "Honest" as one-third of its new identity.

Round Table Pizza, Johnny Rockets, and Fazoli's customers are not being asked to forget the old name by accident – they are being handed a new one that invites the comparison directly.

Fazoli's alone has shuttered roughly fifty locations since November 2025, and several of the chains under the OHG umbrella still have lapsed franchise registrations sitting unrenewed in multiple states.

A franchisee who sank a six-figure investment into a Round Table Pizza or a Johnny Rockets does not get a rebrand to hide behind when a supplier calls about an unpaid invoice from the old regime, even though the lender group that picked the new name does.

The test for any rebrand is simple: does the new name hold up once a customer Googles what happened to the old one, and "Original, Honest, Good" is a name that puts that exact search one click away.

A pizza box or a milkshake cup does not know the difference between old ownership and new, but the regulars who watched Round Table and Johnny Rockets locations go dark during the bankruptcy will decide for themselves whether the new paint job matches what is underneath it.

Sources:

• Nation's Restaurant News Staff, "Fat Brands changes its name," Nation's Restaurant News, October 1, 2026.
• Restaurant Business Staff, "Fat Brands, burdened with heavy debt, declares bankruptcy," Restaurant Business, 2026.
• QSR Magazine Staff, "FAT Brands Becomes OHG Brands Under New Ownership," QSR Magazine, October 1, 2026.
• QSR Magazine Staff, "FAT Brands Bankruptcy Reaches Finish Line with $595 Million Asset Sale," QSR Magazine, 2026.