The Railway Station restaurant was operated by Playground Pals Ltd before it went into liquidation in March and did not open after the Covid-19 lockdown earlier this year.
Cobb & Co franchiser Ben Gower said he wanted to get the restaurant open himself with the hope of a new owner taking over the franchise within about two years.
He had been negotiating with the Dunedin City Council over leasing the same railway station site and talks had been positive.
"At the moment, our goal is to open it before Christmas," he said.
"Time runs out very quickly ... signing the lease is the easy part. Getting people in place and trained and so on ... there’s a lot to opening a restaurant. There’s a lot of key people involved to make that work."
While it was not ideal to be running a restaurant from Tauranga, where he is based, Mr Gower was confident he could make it work and find a new owner.
"We believe that store will work. And we’re prepared to back it. It’s a huge commitment to recommission that store."
Mr Gower said the restaurant would hire 25 to 30 people and they were looking for expressions of interest from people wanting jobs there.
The restaurant was opened in July 2017 after a multimillion-dollar refit.
The previous Cobb & Co in Dunedin, at the Law Courts Hotel, closed a decade earlier.
