Profile
Kellen Luey’s practice focuses on providing sound legal advice, with a concentration on working with companies and individuals in the restaurant and food and beverage industries. With a background in both private and public accounting, his experience helping companies approach a variety of corporate and nonprofit concerns enables him to blend the correct amount of legal advice with the financial and practical realities of running an organization.
He has handled matters for companies at all stages of development, which includes advising clients with respect to entity selection and formation, corporate governance issues, private equity financing matters, and mergers and acquisitions. His practice also regularly involves representing franchisors regarding their franchise, distribution, and licensing programs. Additionally, he advises clients on federal and state franchise laws and regulations, including franchise compliance and exemption strategies.
Capabilities
Experience
- Represented multiple restaurant groups with restructuring and reorganization.
- Represented numerous emerging restaurant concepts in creation and structuring of domestic and international franchising programs.
- Represented fast casual, casual, and fine dining restaurant concepts as general corporate and franchise counsel.
- Represented a fast-casual restaurant chain in merger with a compatible restaurant concept, with a post-closing value of approximately $200 million.
- Represented beverage company in convertible note financing, raising approximately $5 million.
- Represented bakery in sale of business for approximately $25 million.
- Represented private equity fund in Series A financing investment in retail company with a total investment of approximately $10 million.
- Represented breakfast and lunch concept in sale of business for approximately $15 million.
- Represented various private equity finds in strategic financing investments in emerging restaurant concepts.
- Represented venture capital investors in private purchase of stock in Space Exploration Technologies, Corp.; Redwood Materials, Inc.; Anduril Industries, Inc.; Lightmatter, Inc.; Lambda, Inc.; and Anthropic, PBC.
- Represented tech startup in acquisition of drone light show business, technology and equipment.
- Represented a payment processing company in its Series B financing, raising approximately $50 million from strategic and institutional investors.°
- Represented a high-growth, fast-casual restaurant company in nationwide franchising.°
- Represented a retail food business in private equity fund investment of approximately $4.5 million.°
- Represented a monitoring and observability software company in its acquisition for approximately $30 million.°
- Represented a fine-dining restaurant group in connection with restructuring and growth-oriented private equity investment.°
- Represented a sales analytics software company in private equity investment of approximately $5 million.°
- Represented a fiber optic network company in its acquisition by an international broadband company for gross proceeds of approximately $172 million.°
- Represented a cloud security and compliance software company in private equity investment of approximately $10 million.°
°The above representations were handled by Mr. Luey prior to his joining Greenberg Traurig, LLP.
Recognition & Leadership
- A.O. Duer Award, NAIA
- Member, American Bar Association
- Member, Business Law Section
- Member, Franchise Law Section
- Member, Oregon State Bar Association
- Business Law Section
Credentials
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J.D., magna cum laude, Willamette University College of Law
- Presidential Scholar
- Note and Comment Editor, Law Review
- President, Moot Court Board
- Order of Barristers
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B.S., summa cum laude, Corban University
- Distinguished Graduate Award
- 1st Team Academic All-American (Soccer)
- Oregon
- Washington