Cucina! Cucina! Brand, Eight of 12 Restaurants Trade Hands

BELLEVUE, WA-The Cucina! Cucina! Italian Café’s trademark and eight of the 12-restaurant chain’s nine stores in the Northwest have been acquired by an investment group that includes Joey Tomato’s Mediterranean Grill, based in Coquitlam, BC, and Vancouver, BC-based Gibralt Capital Corp. The seller was Beverly Hills, CA-based Wolfgang Puck Worldwide Inc. The price was not disclosed.

Mikel Rogers, the director of operations for the locally based chain, tells GlobeSt.com that the local restaurant staff and management team has been hired by the new owners and that the sale included all but one of the chain’s Northwest stores–the location in Portland, OR, adjacent to Rose Garden Arena, home of the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers.

As part of the agreement, Rogers says that over the next 12 or 18 months Wolfgang Puck Worldwide must cease using the Cucina! Cucina! name on all four of the restaurants it retained, the other three of which are located in California. The locations acquired by Joey Tomato’s and Gibralt Capital include seven restaurants in the Puget Sound area (Seattle, Tukwila, Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland, Redmond, and Tacoma) and one location in Tigard, OR, which is several miles south of Downtown Portland.