Cooper's Hawk does not look like a chain. The rooms are warm and wood-paneled, there are fermentation tanks in view of the dining room, and the monthly wine club feels like something a local vintner runs out of a converted barn. Then you notice the same building in Scottsdale, Naples and Indianapolis. Which is exactly why people ask.
The short answer: Cooper's Hawk is a chain
Cooper's Hawk is a chain, and it has been controlled by institutional private equity since 2019. That July, Ares Management bought out earlier investor KarpReilly and took the lead stake in a deal Restaurant Business reported at more than $700 million, at least 17 times EBITDA by that publication's math. Founder Tim McEnery kept a piece of the company and stayed on as CEO. The controlling interest sits in Los Angeles with a firm that manages more than $600 billion.
A restaurant owned by a private equity fund is the opposite of locally owned. No family or neighborhood operator took the risk, and the returns flow to Ares and its limited partners, not to your town.
| Question | Cooper's Hawk |
|---|---|
| Is it a chain? | Yes |
| Who owns it? | Ares Management (private equity, since July 2019); founder holds a minority stake |
| Publicly traded? | No, though it has prepared for an IPO |
| US locations | About 76 in 14 states as of mid-2026, all company-owned |
| Franchised? | No |
| Founded | October 2005, Orland Park, Illinois |
| Locally owned? | No |
Who owns Cooper's Hawk?
Ares Management, through its private equity group. Here is the money trail. McEnery opened the first Cooper's Hawk in 2005 with roughly $1.3 million raised from family and friends plus a Small Business Administration loan. In 2010 the investment firm KarpReilly bought a minority stake and funded nine years of expansion. In July 2019 Ares bought KarpReilly out and became the controlling owner; the company then had 36 locations and close to 400,000 wine club members.
The official announcement said only that terms were not disclosed. Restaurant Business reported Ares paid more than $700 million, and Restaurant Dive described it as a majority investment. McEnery said at the time that he continued to own a meaningful portion, and he remains founder and CEO in 2026.
Is Cooper's Hawk publicly traded?
No, not as of September 2026. It is a private company, so there is no ticker and no public financial filings. It has come close twice. In January 2022 the company was reported to be planning an IPO at a valuation above $1 billion, then shelved it. In July 2025, Bloomberg and Crain's reported it had prepared an S-1 registration statement and hired Jefferies to line up as much as $400 million in private credit ahead of another attempt.
Private equity funds have a clock. Ares has held Cooper's Hawk since 2019, so an IPO or a sale to another buyer is the expected next chapter. Either way, the owner will not be local.
Is Cooper's Hawk a franchise?
No. Every Cooper's Hawk is owned and run by the company from Downers Grove. There are no franchisees, which is unusual for a restaurant brand of this size and part of why the experience is so consistent from Florida to Wisconsin.
It also means there is no local owner at all. With a franchised chain, a local operator often owns the building and keeps part of the margin. Here, the general manager is an employee and the profit goes up the chain.
How many Cooper's Hawk locations are there?
About 76. In a May 2026 press release announcing its Woodbridge, Virginia opening, the company described itself as 76 restaurants and tasting rooms across 14 states: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. Illinois, where it started, still has the largest cluster.
Its own locations page in September 2026 listed roughly 80 sites including openings announced for Centennial, Colorado; Delray Beach, Florida; Cary, North Carolina; Seven Hills, Ohio; and Indian Land, South Carolina. Colorado and South Carolina would be states 15 and 16. For context, there were 36 locations when Ares bought in and close to 50 when the first IPO was floated in 2022.
Why Cooper's Hawk feels local when it is not
The local feel is not manufactured, which is what makes it convincing. McEnery washed dishes at eleven, worked for Aramark and then for Lynfred Winery in the Chicago suburbs, and noticed on a trip to Napa that almost no winery ran a real restaurant. He opened the first Cooper's Hawk in Orland Park in October 2005 on family money and an SBA loan. That is an independent restaurateur's story, and the brand still tells it.
Every location is also built to look like a working winery: tanks behind glass, a tasting bar by the entrance, a retail wall of house-label bottles. Small independent wineries look like that. Seeing it in a strip center in Ohio or Arizona still reads as local to most visitors, even though the wine is made at the company's central winery in Woodridge, Illinois and shipped out; the barrels on display are aging, not fermenting.
- A real founder story rooted in one Orland Park restaurant McEnery opened himself after years in restaurant and winery work.
- Working-winery design with visible tanks and tasting rooms borrowed from the look of small independent producers.
- A wine club of nearly 840,000 members that builds the kind of loyalty usually reserved for neighborhood spots.
Is that a bad thing?
Not automatically. The food is better than most casual dining, the wine is reasonably priced, and the club gives regulars something to look forward to every month. Private equity ownership is not a moral failure.
But if you picked Cooper's Hawk to support a local, independent restaurant or winery, you did not. You spent money at a PE-backed national chain that is very good at not looking like one. That distinction matters when the goal is keeping dollars in the local economy.
The tasting room feels local. The ownership structure does not. Those two things can both be true at the same time.
Find independent wine bars and chef-owned restaurants near you
Almost every metro has real independent wine bars and chef-owned restaurants where the person who cooked your dinner also signed the lease. Search results mix them in with chains and sponsored listings, and Cooper's Hawk looks enough like the real thing to slip past the filter.
That is the problem Anything But A Chain solves. The map shows only independent, locally owned restaurants and filters every chain out automatically, Cooper's Hawk included. Open it, search near you, and everything left is actually independent.