The two co-owners of Washington-area steak chain Medium Rare are embroiled in a lawsuit, with one of them accusing the other of pocketing rebates from the restaurants’ suppliers.
Tom Gregg filed the suit in Delaware in June under the name “Get Some Food Group Managing Member LLC” against co-owner Mark Bucher, according to court records. The restaurant chain, founded in Cleveland Park in 2011, has regional locations in Arlington, Bethesda and Columbia and others in New York City, Philadelphia and Watertown, Massachusetts.
Mr. Gregg says that while following up on outstanding invoices, a beef vendor for the chain told him that his company had been giving rebates to Mr. Bucher directly since 2024 in exchange for the restaurant buying a certain amount of meat and French fries. Mr. Gregg also accuses Mr. Bucher of claiming to be the restaurant’s sole owner and of diverting the rebates to his own personal account, according to Washingtonian.
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The complaint was amended Tuesday to charge that Mr. Bucher had a similar arrangement with a second vendor, according to the Washington Business Journal.
“Bucher instructed Medium Rare’s employees to place substantial purchase orders with these favored vendors to secure the most lucrative per-pound personal rebate, even though lower-cost and more business-sensible alternatives were available. Employees expressed concerns about the higher costs and lower quality products, but Bucher disregarded their concerns — ostensibly because he did not want to forgo the lucrative personal rebate payments,” the plaintiff said in the suit, according to the Washington Business Journal.
Mr. Bucher’s lawyer, Mark Schamel, says the claims are false and that the suit is an attempt to force Mr. Bucher out, telling Washingtonian that it was a “poor man’s hostile takeover.” Mr. Schamel added that Mr. Gregg had previously agreed to sell his shares to Mr. Bucher and other investors before reneging while the deal was in escrow.
Mr. Gregg’s lawyer, Robert Burns, told Washingtonian that Mr. Schamel’s framing of the suit as a personal dispute is “a distraction from the serious claims” and that “the company did not go to court lightly but instead was compelled to act when it uncovered that he was pocketing vendor rebates.”
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