A Bethesda entrepreneur has his eyes on acquiring the Moby Dick’s House of Kabob chain of restaurants; and he’s only 19 years old. Artin Afsharjavan, chief executive of Javan Capital Partners LLC, has made an $8 million cash bid to buy the chain of restaurants.
“I realize there’s an interest and a market in this line of cuisine,” Afsharjavan said, adding that the potential deal is in the very early stages.
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Calls and e-mails to Moby Dick’s corporate officers were not returned Thursday.
Afsharjavan owns Javan, a Persian restaurant in Bethesda that competes with Moby Dick’s. Moby Dick’s has 12 locations in the Washington area; Afsharjavan’s plan would be to rapidly expand the chain nationally.
The young entrepreneur has been a businessman since he was 13. He decided to go into the vending machine business, renting a number of machines and earning money from the proceeds.
“I started with maybe $100 in my pocket and have been working my way up for the past six years,” he said.
Afsharjavan made his fortune buying and selling computer domains. He focused on the Hispanic market, buying international domains for South American and Central American Web sites.
Since then, he has acquired minor interests in a number of area businesses, from gas stations to limousine companies to apartment complexes. If the Moby Dick’s deal does not go through, Afsharjavan still plans to get into the “fast casual” restaurant business, which encompasses restaurants with quick turnarounds but higher-quality products than typical fast-food joints — examples include Moby Dick’s, Panera and Baja Fresh.
His many business interests have put college on the back burner for now, but Afsharjavan said that isn’t forever.
“I made a promise to my grandfather, who passed away recently, that I would finish my education,” he said. “It just may take me a few years longer.”
