R&B Realty Group and Worldwide Corporate Housing (doing business as Oakwood Worldwide) provides housing where customers are free to fly the coop. R&B Realty Group company provides temporary furnished apartments and extended-stay lodging. It has more than 20,000 residences in 4,000 locations throughout North America, Europe, and Asia operating through several brands. Its Oakwood Corporate Housing maintains leases on residential units, and Oakwood Apartments offers both furnished and unfurnished units. Its Oakwood Residences brand supplements apartment life with the services of a hotel. R&B Realty Group company offers upscale, luxury apartments through its Oakwood Premier brand. Oakwood was founded in 1962 by chairman and CEO Howard Ruby.

Carlson Restaurants Worldwide (CRW) has a lot of Friday's for which to be thankful. A leader in full-service restaurants, the company operates and franchises more than 900 T.G.I. Friday's casual dining locations across the US and in about 60 other countries. The restaurant chain offers a menu featuring beef, chicken, and seafood entrees along with a selection of popular appetizers. About 300 T.G.I. Friday's units are company-owned while the rest are franchised. The company also operates Pick Up Stix, an Asian-themed fast-casual chain with more than 90 locations in California, Nevada, and Arizona. CRW is a subsidiary of travel and leisure conglomerate Carlson Companies.

This company is part of the Tex-Mex restaurant stampede. Buffalo's Franchise Concepts operates and franchises about 30 Buffalo's Southwest Cafe casual dining locations in Georgia and about 10 other states. The restaurants offer a typical southwestern style menu, including burritos, fajitas, and quesadillas, along with burgers, steaks, and Buffalo-style chicken wings. Outside the US, the chain has locations in Kuwait, Puerto Rico, and Saudi Arabia. David Hyde and Ralph Perrella started Buffalo's in 1985. Former franchisees Drew Alexander and Shelli Lang acquired the company in 2007.

SpringHealth Leisure hopes that going private will be its springboard back to fiscal health. The company, which operates gym facilities in the UK, was taken private by chairman Sandy Anderson in 2005. The company's five London-area SpringHealth Leisure Clubs typically offer such amenities as swimming, court sports, makeovers, and massage in addition to aerobics classes, personal trainers, and weight machines. SpringHealth Leisure operates the publicly owned swim and fitness facility (Pools on the Park) at Richmond. Prior to Anderson's move to privatize the company, it had already divested nine other health clubs and a restaurant.

Carvel provides an affordable ice cream experience and family fun for everyone by offering a variety of fresh made cakes, novelties and fountain ice cream products. This all-American favorite is the nation’s first retail ice cream franchise, and has become one of the best-loved and most recognized names in its industry. Carvel has been making ice cream fresh daily for over 75 years and is home of the original all ice cream cake. Today, Carvel-lovers still seek out our creamy, crunchy treats in more than 500 Carvel stores and over 8,500 supermarkets nationwide.

Gresham Hotel Group, formerly Ryan Hotel Group, was founded in 1949 by Dermot Ryan. It was purchased and taken private in 2004 by Precinct Investments. European business travelers looking for a posh pillow to plump might be familiar with Gresham Hotels. The company has five upscale properties in Europe that cater to business travelers. Gresham Hotels' properties are located in the city centers of Brussels; Cork, Ireland; Dublin; Hamburg, Germany; and London. The company gets its name from its flagship hotel located on Dublin's O'Connell Street.

Keith Johnson saw how much his family enjoyed eating soft pretzels at a local farmers’ market and thought pretzels would be a great concept to franchise in malls. He worked at creating his own recipe for pretzels and, once the recipe was perfected, in 1992 opened the first The Pretzel Twister store in Naples, Florida. Mister Twister Pretzels operates the Pretzel Twister snack food chain, with about 40 franchised locations that specialize in soft pretzels. The eateries feature such pretzel flavors as Caramel Crunch, Cinnamon, and Toasted Almond; the company also sells flavored pretzel dips and smoothies. Its outlets are located primarily in shopping malls in Florida, North Carolina, and 10 other southeastern states. Founder Keith Johnson started the Pretzel Twister chain in 1992 after seeing families eat soft pretzels at a farmer's market.

The Rocco Forte Collection is a family of 13 highly individual hotels and resorts, with four new properties due to open within the next three years. Each is as individual and characterful as the country and city which inspires its design and each features a unique sense of style and ambience that awaits your discovery. Yet like any family they also share certain characteristics. Behind each individual personality you will find luxurious rooms, fine dining experiences, class-leading facilities and a dedication to providing you with the highest levels of service.

This company hopes its crème brulee, croissants, and quiche prove as memorable as Proust's famous teacake. La Madeleine operates a chain of more than 60 la Madeleine Bakery, Café & Bistro casual dining locations in Texas, Georgia, and Louisiana, offering French country cuisine for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The restaurants, which welcome patrons with such interior appointments as a stone hearth and handcrafted wood tables, use a cafeteria-style serving line and limited table service. Each location also sells a variety of fresh baked goods. French native Patrick Leon Esquerré started the business in 1983. La Madeleine is owned by a group of investors including Paris-based restaurant operator Groupe Le Duff.

The Biltmore Company doesn't need to build more. It oversees the Biltmore Estate, which includes the 250-room home (the largest privately owned in the US), as well as a hotel, a winery, restaurants and retail shops, and licensing rights for a line of home decor products. (Guests don't stay at the Biltmore House, but at the Inn on Biltmore Estate.) Some one million visitors tour the home and grounds each year. The house sits on 8,000 acres of land and encompasses four acres of floor space. It has 35 bedrooms, some 40 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces, and three kitchens. The Biltmore is family-owned by descendants of the Vanderbilts, and is one of the few National Historic Landmarks that is entirely privately funded.

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