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Wayback Burgers’ franchisor wants to redefine what it means to be a multi-brand franchisee. On Thursday, it unveiled Hubspoke Brands, a franchising platform that supports multi-brand ownership within the fast casual segment. Jake’s Franchising, the franchisor of Wayback Burgers, also rebranded as Wayback Franchising, the company said in an emailed press release. 

Hubspoke Brands currently offers six concepts, including Molte Pizze, giving franchisees the opportunity to expand into different brands without changing franchisors. 

“It makes it easier from an operational perspective. [For some multi-brand franchisees], the back offices are different at all the brands, the requirements are different, and we can bring it all under one [company] and make it more efficient for them,” John Eucalitto, Wayback Franchising CEO, said.

Wayback Franchising opened the first Hubspoke Kitchen over a year ago, a company-owned unit that houses six brands and prepares meals in an off-premise-focused space in Connecticut. The next version of Hubspoke Kitchen will contain indoor seating, going along with the trend of customers returning to dine-in.

Renaming the franchisor and expanding its brands was years in the making, Eucalitto said, adding that planning began in 2018, but the COVID-19 pandemic put this work on hold. 

The new platform and the sister brands don’t mean Wayback Burgers is slowing down its current growth rate. Wayback Burgers, which has about 180 units, has roughly 15 stores currently under construction. It expects 10 to 25 units to open in 2025, which could push its unit count to 200 by year's end. 

With Wayback Burgers growing post-pandemic, Eucalitto and his team decided to pull the trigger on the new brand platform. Franchisees have been growing in the last five years, but through M&A, private equity or other means, but Eucalitto said he wants to offer another way for growth. 

“We didn’t aspire to do that. We aspire to continue to grow and help our staff and our franchisees grow, but see how we can do it better,” Eucalitto said.

Growing Hubspoke Brands

The Hubspoke Kitchen concept, which is also under the Hubspoke Brands platform, is designed for experienced operators rather than first-time franchisees, Eucalitto said. The company’s variety of brands can benefit multi-branded operators who may have sold out a concept in particular territory and are looking to other concepts for growth. It can potentially open up new real estate options too, especially in shopping centers, where there may be competing brands. Hubspoke’s roster of brands means operators can shift to a different brand that won’t face intense sales competition.

“We’d pivot to something else to better compete if we needed to, because that’s how Hubspoke is supposed to be,” Eucalitto said, adding that he expects Hubspoke to expand from six brands to 10 to 12. 

Hubspoke expects its multi-brand units to show strong volume and controllable food and labor costs. At the Hubspoke Kitchen in Wallingford, Connecticut, each brand has its own station to test its performance with just two or three employees. Wayback Franchising is testing the brands outside the Hubspoke model to measure performance. 

So far, the company feels like its Molte Pizza and Pane & Mozz brands are ready to standalone after being proven within Hubspoke Kitchen.

The company is already building out three co-branded concepts, one of which, a Molte Pizza and a Wayback Burgers in New Jersey, is opening next week. It has more co-branded locations forthcoming in Bridgeport and Orange, Connecticut, both of which are owned by a multi-unit, multi-brand franchisee, Eucalitto said. A standalone Pane and Mozz will also open near the existing Hubspoke Kitchen in Connecticut. 

“I believe that the Hubspoke Kitchen model as a market/restaurant/multi-branded or multi-menu mix concept will last … We have to focus on making every individual brand and the product and the systems as best as we possibly can, so that they can stand on their own,” Eucalitto. 

Hubspoke Kitchens can also be used to test new menu items. For example, the company came up with an ice cream parfait for Wayback within a Hubspoke Kitchen as a way to save leftover cookies that would otherwise go to waste. This is the top selling item in the Hubspoke Kitchen, he said, adding that the parfaits will be rolled out to Wayback Burgers in September or October. 

Wayback Burgers remains key brand

Wayback has been focusing on improving back office operations and getting systems in place to support franchisees, like up-to-date data and reporting, Eucalitto said.

“We cannot lose sight of Wayback [Burgers]. That is the most important brand for us,” Eucalitto said. “If it didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be here. We have to continue with it. We know we can do much better with it.” 

Wayback realigned and expanded its corporate team this past year to ensure that leaders were in the right place doing what they do best, Eucalitto said.

From a technology perspective, the company improved how it communicates key metrics and sales data to operators. Franchisees typically see daily sales reports from their own point-of-sales systems as well as from corporate, which sends daily journals and recommendations on different sales drivers. This has helped cut down the time needed to reconcile POS data from nearly an hour to five minutes. 

The company, which has done very little advertising since the COVID-19 pandemic started, also said it would collect 2% local marketing fee and spend it with franchisees, which it hasn’t done before: Wayback previously left marketing to franchisees. Regions will now pool their resources for marketing in addition to national marketing efforts. 

“We're very conservative, we're very slow and methodical, but we do everything we possibly can to help because we only have that one customer,” Eucalitto said. “And that's the franchisees.”