Brio Tuscan Grille, LongHorn Steakhouse, McCormick & Schmick's and a number of franchisees announced expansion news.

BRIO Tuscan Grille, a BRAVO | BRIO Restaurant Group ((NASDAQ: BBRG) concept, opened its second Las Vegas location. This is the first BRIO Tuscan Grille to open in 2011 and the second restaurant for BBRG this year, which owns and operate 88 restaurants.

GE Capital, Franchise Finance provided a $7.5 million credit facility to MSK Enterprises, LLC, a Church's Chicken and Little Caesar's franchisee. The facility includes a $6.5 million term loan used for the acquisition of 14 Church's Chicken units and five fee properties, and a $1 million development line of credit to help finance the building of three Little Caesars Pizza units.

Franchisee Five Star Equity Partners, LLC opened a Jamba Juice store in Orange, Conn. This is the first Jamba Juice location in Connecticut. The chain now has stores in 24 states.

LongHorn Steakhouse opened a location in Kingsland, Ga.

McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurants, Inc. (Nasdaq:MSSR) announced that its Board of Directors is exploring the sale of the company as well as broad evaluation of the company's other strategic alternatives in an attempt to drive shareholder value.

Franchisee and airport concessionaire P.J.J.D. Enterprises, Inc. opened a Papa John's location in Charlotte/Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, N.C.

YUM! Brands (NYSE: YUM) has submitted a preliminary proposal to Little Sheep Group Limited under which YUM! Brands would offer to acquire all outstanding shares of Little Sheep, other than a minority interest to be held by the chairman and other founding shareholders of Little Sheep. Little Sheep owns and operates Hot Pot concept restaurants primarily in China and is headquartered in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China. Its shares are listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. YUM! Brands currently owns 27.2 percent of the outstanding shares of Little Sheep. No formal offer has been made at this stage and any such offer, should one be made, would be made only after YUM! Brands has obtained all necessary regulatory approvals for the transaction. There can be no assurance that the current discussions between YUM! Brands and Little Sheep regarding the proposal will ultimately lead to an offer being made or, if an offer is made, that it will result in a completed transaction.