The heavy lifting is almost done at the platform company WOWorks, and now CEO Kelly Roddy is on the hunt for acquisitions.
St. Petersburg, Florida-based WOWorks now has six physical brands operating close to 400 restaurants within the portfolio, which are expected to be fully integrated into the company’s platform by the end of the year—a process they call WOWork-ization.
That means all brands will share infrastructure, technology, supply systems and more to leverage shared buying power and negotiate better contracts.
It’s a model that has become increasingly popular, demonstrated by companies like Inspire Brands, Craveworthy Brands and GoTo Foods (formerly Focus Brands), as well as legacy players like Yum Brands, Restaurant Brands International and Darden Restaurants.
For WOWorks, it started with Saladworks, which Roddy took leadership of in 2019. The next year, parent company Centre Lane Partners LLC acquired Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh and Frutta Bowls, bringing the three brands together under the WOWorks umbrella.
Later, The Simple Greek, Barberitos and Z!Eats (formerly Zoup!) joined the WOWorks fold. All are “better-for-you” and almost entirely franchised brands (in fact, the few restaurants that are company-owned will be refranchised, Roddy said).
Fundamentally, the platform model is designed to create efficiencies that bring down costs for franchise operators, said Roddy.
But it’s not an easy process, and it has taken a few years to “digest” the existing brands, Roddy said. Along the way, some of the brands are getting a bit of an overhaul.
The brand formerly known as Zoup, for example, was renamed Z!Eats (zee-eats) in a repositioning designed to signal the 60-unit chain is not just about soup. Sandwiches, salads and flatbreads are also on the menu, and Roddy hopes to eliminate any veto factor associated with soup.
“The upside is, they have the world’s best soup, but the downside is when people think of it, they think of soup, and people don’t eat soup in the summer,” Roddy said.
So WOWorks is in the process of converting all Zoup locations to Z!Eats, with physical remodels, new menu boards and signage. An app is in the works, and the company is rolling out kiosks. (Actually, all the WOWorks brands are testing kiosks, but Z!Eats tested them first.)
Roddy expects the transition will be done before the end of the year.
Similar work has already been done for 15-unit The Simple Greek. Those units are being converted to the Garbanzo brand—except perhaps in a few markets where there is already a Garbanzo nearby. WOWorks includes about 40 Garbanzo units.
The Simple Greek, meanwhile, will live on as a virtual brand, but more on that later.
The 50-unit Barberitos Southwestern Grill brand is also in the throes of a brand repositioning, but details on that were not yet available.
Then there’s WOWorks’ largest brand: Saladworks, which has about 180 units, including a handful that are co-branded with Frutta Bowls.
At Saladworks, the company is adding in virtual brands, like Sandwich Works and Soup Works, which borrow from the menus of sister brands within the platform.
In fact, last year WOWorks launched a lineup of seven virtual brands designed for franchisees to be able to generate incremental revenue by offering the menus through third-party marketplaces.
None of the restaurants have gone “full bright” on all the virtual brands WOWorks hopes to make available just yet. Roddy said the virtual brands are generating an average of about 10% additional revenue so far—some are as high as 20%.
But the company is still evaluating what virtual brands work and where, he said.
WowBao, for example, one of the virtual offerings, does well, said Roddy. So does Soup Works and Sandwich Works.
Other virtual brands that were initially proposed, like Toasty (“elevating humble toast” from Frutta Bowl) and Spoon Me (select items from Frutta Bowl), are “only okay,” said Roddy. “We haven’t cracked the code for Frutta Bowl’s virtual brands.”
Still, WOWorks remains bullish on the virtual brand strategy.
By the end of the year, all of the “heavy lifting” should be done and it will be time to expand the family, he said.
WOWorks and Centre Lane have a “solid plan” to add a couple of brands to the platform by Christmas—though Roddy declined to specify what they are shopping for.
They are looking for “better-for-you” brands, and something franchised and probably fast casual, he said.
More may be added next year. “We don’t know how many brands we’ll end up with, but I can see us having a double-digit number of brands at some point,” said Roddy.
When asked about competition among the platform operators for growth brands, Roddy said WOWorks isn’t fishing for new brands in the same pond as big collectors like Inspire or GoTo Foods, Roddy noted. And those looking for smaller emerging brands—like Craveworthy—aren’t necessarily shopping in the better-for-you aisles.
“We feel like we’re very unique in what we’ve started,” said Roddy. “We’ll figure out what investors and all that look like when we come up on finding a brand we want.”