New Krystal CEO is out

The Krystal Co. has parted ways with CEO Doug Pendergast, effective immediately.

Harsha Agadi, currently the non-executive chairman of Krystal's board and a former CEO of Church's Chicken, will take over on Tuesday as interim CEO while the firm searches for a replacement for Pendergast.

The company has also replaced its chief marketing officer, tapping Jason Abelkop for the job in July.

Pendergast's exit comes just two years after he announced that the burger company would relocate to Atlanta from Chattanooga, citing the need to be close to Atlanta's airport to fuel long term store growth.

Pendergast said he planned to add 150 new stores to the chain's existing 350 units, but it's not clear that the company ever increased the net number of stores. In fact, numbers supplied by the company show that the number of units has actually decreased from 360 restaurants.

Under Pendergast, the company also slashed the size of stores to save money, shrinking restaurants by 600 square feet to 1,700 square feet.

Pendergast came to Krystal after serving as chief development officer for the Chattanooga-based Craftworks Restaurants and Breweries Inc.

Atlanta-based Argonne Capital Group in 2012 purchased Krystal for about $175 million from the existing management team, which at the time was led by Fred Exum. Exum and other Chattanooga-based managers left shortly after the purchase, along with a number of other top executives.

In an interview shortly after the sale, then-CEO Exum claimed that retaining Krystal's Chattanooga headquarters had been a condition of the sale.

However, the company's new owners were made up of a group of executives and investors who were almost all Atlanta-based, many of whom had worked at Atlanta-based Church's Chicken.

UTC is working with Krystal officials to schedule later this fall an unveiling of the portion of the Krystal memorabilia collection that will be on display in the College of Business, according to Chuck Cantrell, associate vice chancellor for communication and marketing.

Read more in tomorrow's Times Free Press.

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