Bob Evans Farms Inc

On the verge of going public, Mimi's Cafe Inc. on Monday said it had accepted a better offer. The Tustin-based casual dining chain said it agreed to be acquired for $103.3 million in cash by restaurant chain and sausage maker Bob Evans Farms Inc. Bob Evans Farms, a name synonymous with breakfast sausage in the Midwest, first approached Mimi's Cafe three years ago about a possible sale. Then, last month, Mimi's announced it would sell $75 million of stock in an initial offering.

On the verge of going public, Mimi's Cafe Inc. on Monday said it had accepted a better offer. The Tustin-based casual dining chain said it agreed to be acquired for $103.3 million in cash by restaurant chain and sausage maker Bob Evans Farms Inc. Bob Evans Farms, a name synonymous with breakfast sausage in the Midwest, first approached Mimi's Cafe three years ago about a possible sale. Then, last month, Mimi's announced it would sell $75 million of stock in an initial offering.

Mimi's Cafe, a chain of French-inspired casual dining restaurants based in Irvine, may get a new expansion boost after being sold for $50 million. LeDuff America Inc., owner of Bruegger's Bagels, will take over control of Mimi's from Bob Evans Farms Inc., the companies said this week. Mimi's, launched in 1978 by a former American airman and named after his French paramour, has 145 restaurants in 24 states. But the chain has had several years of slumping same-store sales growth, hit by the same market pressures that have kept the full-service restaurant sector from growing as quickly as fast-food and fast-casual rivals.

General Mills Inc. said it was raising wholesale prices 2% to 9% on several categories of foods, including Progresso soups, some frozen breakfast items, yogurt and Totino's snack foods, to keep pace with rising raw materials costs. Some of the nation's biggest food companies, including Kraft Foods Inc., Hormel Foods Corp., Bob Evans Farms Inc. and Birds Eye Foods Inc., have said in recent months that they were taking measures to pass on soaring dairy, soybean, corn and meat prices to consumers.

Bob Evans, 89, whose quest for quality sausage to serve the truckers who filled his 12-stool, 24-hour-a-day steakhouse in southeast Ohio led to the creation of a restaurant chain that bears his name, died Thursday at the Cleveland Clinic, Bob Evans Farms Inc. announced. The clinic said he died of complications from pneumonia. Evans, a native of Sugar Ridge, Ohio, complained that he could not obtain good sausage for the restaurant he opened in 1946 in Gallipolis in southeast Ohio.

Mimi's new prototype restaurant design aims to deliver a thorough Parisian experience - the airy gardens! The bustling cafes! The romantic corners! The wine! The twist? Mimi's plans to incorporate each of these elements into a single building. In a shopping center in Santa Clarita, minutes from the Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park, hard-hatted workers are putting the finishing touches on the 34-year-old chain's so-called “revolution.” Instead of “Mimi's Cafe,” the restaurant will be known as just “Mimi's.” The new flagship, set to open next week in the shell of an older Mimi's, will expand beyond the chain's full-service background to include several themed dining spaces.

Like the easy-going, down-home characters they portray in their television commercials, sausage kings Jimmy Dean and Jerry Owens don't give the impression they are fighting whole hog for the fattest share of the market. It seems mostly a gentleman's competition for leadership in the breakfast sausage market between the two Dallas-based companies, whose officials praise each other's products as high quality. Jimmy Dean Meat Co.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System is tentatively targeting Advanced Micro Devices Inc., J.C. Penney Co., First Union Corp., Rite Aid Corp. and 11 others in its annual drive to push companies in its portfolio to boost their lagging stock prices. For each of the last 12 years, CalPERS, the nation's largest public pension fund, has singled out about 10 U.S. companies of the 1,600 it owns in an effort to reform their board practices to increase shareholders' returns.

Can the Simms family teach a new dog old tricks? It's a natural question for the Simms clan, which has deep roots in the Southern California dining scene and last summer sold the Mimi's Cafe chain for a reported $103 million. Scion Chris Simms, a 30-year-old Ivy League grad who initially resisted the lure of the restaurant business, hopes the answer lies in the Lazy Dog Cafe, an elaborate canine-centric eatery in Westminster.

Using taxpayer money, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has sent television stations statewide a mock news story extolling a proposal that would benefit political boosters in the business community by ending mandatory lunch breaks for many hourly workers. The tape looks like a news report and is narrated by a former television reporter who now works for the state. But unlike an actual news report, it does not provide views critical of the proposed changes.