For 13 years, Wayne Moore held leadership positions at various hedge funds. Most recently, he served as co-founder and partner at Lunia Capital, which invested in business services and IT companies. But one morning in 2018, Moore had an epiphany. “I woke up and realized I just didn’t want to do it anymore,” he says. “The last thing I wanted was to not be excited about where I was putting capital.” So, Moore took a year off to explore emerging markets.
“That search led me to the lower and lower-middle markets because of a generational transfer of wealth happening with baby boomers,” he says. “Over the next 30 years, we’re going to see trillions of dollars of assets change hands.”
Moore launched Crux Capital in 2019 in Dallas, using his own cash, to begin investing in consumer service companies with an annual EBITDA between $1 million and $15 million. “These businesses are dominantly owned by one person or one family, and the reason they sell is typically age-related,” he says. “Only about a third of the time does a company that fits these criteria transfer to the next generation, so most of these companies never had a real institutional partner.”
Moore pours investment dollars into companies based in North Texas—or those no more than a three-hour flight away from DFW. “Dallas is the best place to launch a private investment firm in the world,” he says.
His biggest hit thus far has been Buff City Soap, a plant-based soap franchise, into which Crux, and its LPs, initially deployed $10 million in December of 2019. The company promptly relocated its headquarters from Memphis to Dallas, and Buff City Soap scaled from about 20 units to more than 260 today. Over that growth track, Crux deployed hundreds of millions of dollars into the enterprise. It has since sold a significant portion of its ownership stake to General Atlantic.
Other portfolio brands include HTeaO, a drive-thru tea concept with a goal to triple in size by 2026 to 300 locations. Crux also counts Superscapes, one of the largest commercial landscape companies in DFW, and Woody’s Brands, a multi-unit operator of bar-restaurant concepts across Texas and Louisiana, as investments.
Earlier this year, to increase his firm’s food and beverage play, Moore launched restaurant holding company Uncommon Brands to invest in QSR and fast-casual F&B concepts that have three to 20 units. “We came across brands that were interesting but lacked real management, infrastructure, and depth,” Moore says. “Although we were interested, it was just too heavy of a lift for private equity to get involved. So, we saw an opportunity to launch a holding company.”
So far, Uncommon, led by former NFL fullback and tight end Garrett Mills, has deployed just north of $20 million; over the next several years, it expects to invest $100 million. The holding company’s first purchase came in the form of Fuego Tortilla Grill, a fast-casual Tex-Mex restaurant with four locations in Texas. The goal is to grow it to 25 locations over the next five years.
Crux, which has nine employees, has so far raised capital on a deal-by-deal basis, but soon, Moore aims to initiate an institutional raise. “That’s our natural evolution,” he says. “We could probably be a $200 million, or greater, fund in the next year or two. Until then, we will continue to raise capital on a deal-by-deal basis. As far as our portfolio, I could see us growing to 15 or 20 companies.”
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