Bareburger
Dining · 28+ locations · New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, Westchester/Hudson Valley NY, Columbus OH
Bareburger built its name on organic, farm-sourced burgers from a converted Astoria bakery in 2009. It's since pulled back from a peak near 40 locations on four continents to under 30, mostly in the New York area, settling three separate wage-and-hour lawsuits along the way.
The Big Picture
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.
The Dirty Details
Ownership
Feenix Venture PartnersPrivate Equity
Feenix Venture Partners is a New York investment firm founded in 2017 that provides growth capital to small and mid-sized consumer businesses through both debt and equity; its wider portfolio includes The Slanted Door and Capital Tacos. Its three Ferret companies show the range of what that can mean: already the majority owner of Jack's Stir Brew by the time it led that chain's 2022 merger, a lender to Bareburger whose 2018 loan never converted, and an investor in OddFellows on undisclosed terms. The label on the check matters less than whether control ever changes hands.
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Explore all diningCompany data last updated July 2026
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