Panera founder and Cava chairman Ron Shaich bets $100 million on Level99, bringing his restaurant industry playbook to entertainment

Ron Shaich spent his career building companies that come to dominate a category before anyone else can. He founded Panera and built it into a chain of more than 2,500 units. As chairman and lead investor at Cava, he led the investment that converted Zoe’s Kitchen into the Mediterranean fast-casual chain, and helped take it public. Now Shaich is applying the same playbook to entertainment, doubling down on Level99, the interactive challenge-based venue company he has backed since it was still a concept.

Act III Holdings, Shaich’s investment vehicle, is adding $50 million to its existing $50 million commitment, bringing its total stake in Level99 to $100 million. The increase follows the June opening of the company’s fifth location, at Disney Springs in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. At just three weeks in, the site was “exceeding our projections, doing really well,” said Matt DuPlessie, Level99’s founder and CEO.

“I think Act III sees what we see: that the potential for this concept is much broader than kind of one location at a time, and we’re going to accelerate,” said DuPlessie.

Shaich has been Level99’s sole equity partner, and more partner than investor, since DuPlessie’s earliest days developing the idea. “We’ve been with Matt since day one, and since this was still a concept,” Shaich said. “I believe that Level99 has the potential to be the best business I’ve ever been involved in.”

“This isn’t something we decided to do yesterday. This is a commitment to ensuring that Matt has every ounce of resources he needs to build the organization and the capabilities ahead of the curve, and then to continue to build these out at the rate of one a quarter.”

The reasoning, Shaich said, comes down to how Act III evaluates any category before committing capital. It’s the same test the firm applied to Mediterranean fast-casual before backing Cava. “We start by looking at categories and saying: does that category have, or will it have, tailwinds in five to 10 years?” he said. “We know from our experience that the dominant player in a category wins. Think McDonald’s versus Burger King. Think Panera versus Sawyer Bakery.”

“What we do at Act III, and in all the businesses that we’re involved in—we start by looking at categories and saying: does that category have, will it have, tailwinds in five to 10 years? Just as we saw with Mediterranean, as we see with Panera today, and any of the other businesses we’re invested in—Honest Greens in Europe, Tatte [Café], and better casual dining.”

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