Newport Restaurant Group is 100% owned by its workers—and has paid them $33 million since 1995: ‘Nobody else gets the benefit’
Source: Fortune ·
Bartender Andy Staane has spent 24 years at Newport Restaurant Group, where every employee is an owner. As baby boomers prepare to hand off up to $5 trillion in small businesses, its CEO says ESOPs are a “proven model.”
From the source
Andy Staane started as a bartender at The Mooring in Newport, R.I., in 2002, as a teenager trying to scrape together a few extra bucks. Twenty-four years later, Staane is still in the same role at the same company. But he isn’t just an employee anymore—he’s also a part owner, just like all of his coworkers. Newport Restaurant Group, which owns The Mooring and 17 other restaurants and hospitality venues across Rhode Island and Massachusetts, is one of the few companies in the country where the shareholders aren’t outside investors but the employees themselves. Founded in 1925 as a fuel oil business, the company sold off its other assets and began an employee stock ownership plan in 1995, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. It has since become 100% employee-owned. What started as a summer job for Staane became a lifelong career because staying was a no-brainer. “If I’m going to do this for a living, I may as well stay with the company that pays me the ESOP, gives me the health…