# Newport Restaurant Group pays workers $33 million as 100% employee owners > A Rhode Island restaurant chain has been 100% employee-owned since 1995, paying out $33 million to worker-shareholders and offering an alternative to private equity buyouts. - Title: Newport Restaurant Group pays workers $33 million as 100%… - Summary: A Rhode Island restaurant chain has been 100% employee-owned since 1995, paying out $33 million to worker-shareholders and offering an alternative to private… - Keywords: newport restaurant group, employee ownership, esop, rhode island, business succession, private equity, small business, worker retention, Newport, Restaurant, Group, pays - Source: Fortune — https://fortune.com/article/newport-restaurant-group-esop-employee-owned-33-million-small-business-succession - Author: Muskaan Arshad - Read time: 2 min - Topics: newport restaurant group, employee ownership, esop, rhode island, business succession, private equity, small business, worker retention ## From bartender to part owner Andy Staane started as a teenager bartender at The Mooring in Newport, Rhode Island in 2002. Twenty four years later he remains in the same role but now also owns part of the company. ## Newport Restaurant Group structure Newport Restaurant Group owns The Mooring and seventeen other restaurants and hospitality venues across Rhode Island and Massachusetts. ## Why Staane stayed Staane chose to remain at Newport Restaurant Group because the company offers ESOP payments, health insurance, paid time off, stock options and a four zero one k plan. He saw no reason to leave. > 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 insurance, paid time off, the stock options, 401k. ## Scale of employee ownership Newport Restaurant Group has about one thousand one hundred employee-owners, a number that swells to roughly one thousand eight hundred workers during the busy summer season. ## How the ESOP works Newport operates as an employee stock ownership plan where a trust holds company shares for participating employees. ## Thirty three million paid to workers Since nineteen ninety five, Newport Restaurant Group has paid out thirty three million dollars to its employee-owners.When workers leave, the company buys back their shares, which employees can roll into retirement accounts or cash out. ## CEO on the model's success CEO Mick Lamond, who joined as CFO in two thousand five and was promoted to the top job in two thousand twenty five, says the overarching success is giving employees a retirement plan that grows… > Everything that we're doing is to drive the value of our company that only we, as the employee owners, get the benefit of. Nobody else gets the benefit of that work. ## The looming succession crisis By two thousand thirty five, about six million small and midsize businesses will face ownership transitions representing up to five trillion dollars in enterprise value, according to the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility. ## ESOPs versus private equity Lamond says ESOPs offer founders a proven model to sell companies to employees rather than to strategic buyers or private equity firms.U.S. > This is a great opportunity for a founder to be able to sell their company to its employees, as opposed to maybe selling it to a strategic buyer or selling it to private equity. ## Staane's family joins the company Staane has seen the benefits of employee ownership over two decades at Newport.His sixteen year old son recently joined as a busboy, making employee ownership a family affair and showing the model's appeal across generations. > Now my son is involved in it now, and even he sees it. ## Key takeaway Newport Restaurant Group, 100% employee-owned since 1995, has paid $33 million to its 1,100 worker-owners, showing how ESOPs can retain staff and offer an alternative to private equity as business succession looms.