Bareburger is still run by the co-founder who opened its first location in a converted Astoria bakery in 2009, with no outside equity investor in the company's history. That independence has come with real friction: three wage-and-hour lawsuits settled between 2013 and 2018, each naming the founder personally, and a legal battle with a former franchisee that ended in bankruptcy court. The chain answers to its own founding group, not a private equity firm or a public market, for a business that has shrunk sharply from its mid-2010s peak.