The fast-casual Wayback Burgers is an almost entirely franchised brand. |Photos courtesy of Wayback Franchising/HubSpoke Brands.
The franchising company behind the 180-unit Wayback Burger brand is transforming into a multi-brand operation designed to give franchisees a lot more options.
The company on Thursday announced an overhaul that will essentially turn one fast-casual burger franchise into a portfolio with a total of seven brands (eventually), under the name HubSpoke Brands.
It’s a bit complicated, admits CEO and owner John Eucalitto, who has been working with the fast-casual Wayback Burger brand since it started franchising in 2009. He later acquired that brand from founder John Carter.
But Eucalitto said he has been working to architect this shift for a few years, and the move is similar to what companies like GoTo Foods, Craveworthy Brands and Inspire Brands have done to build a stable of franchise brands around a core platform with shared infrastructure.
For Wayback, however, the first step was changing the name of the burger brand’s franchising company.
Wayback Burgers was founded in 1991 as Jake’s Hamburgers in Newark, Delaware, so the franchisor has long been operating under the name Jake’s Franchising LLC, even though the restaurants shifted to the Wayback Burgers name years ago. (A handful still use “Jake’s Wayback Burgers,” but they will fully transition to Wayback by the end of the year, Eucalitto said.)
So now the franchisor has been renamed as Wayback Franchising, fully retiring the “Jake’s” name. Meanwhile, Wayback Burgers continues to grow, with about eight restaurants opened this year so far and another 15 under construction.
Wayback is known for made-to-order burgers and shakes.
In addition, however, Eucalitto has launched another franchising platform that will be home to six other brands, mostly created in-house. The new platform is called HubSpoke Brands, and, in time, the Wayback Burger brand will be absorbed into that platform.
For now, however, the cornerstone of HubSpoke Brands will be a concept called HubSpoke Kitchen. The first (and only) location opened more than two years ago in Wallingford, Connecticut as an incubator for the brands being developed.
It’s a sort of ghost kitchen/food hall hybrid with a retail element. Five brands—each with their own menus—are operated out of one kitchen at HubSpoke, and there’s a little market where guests can pick up a few items while they wait for their food.
The brands include:
Molte Pizza, which offers three iconic styles of pizza: crispy tavern, New York and a cheesy, caramelized Detroit.
Pane & Mozz, serving Italian focaccia sandwiches.
Taculto, a taco-and-bowl concept.
Citta Pasta, offering traditional Italian comfort food.
Uncle Willie’s Smokehouse, a barbecue institution known for slow-smoked meats. This was a brand Eucalitto attempted to franchise before the pandemic, though it never took off. The company was forced to close it during the COVID-19 shutdown. But now it will be reborn under the HubSpoke platform.
A rendering of the prototype for franchised HubSpoke Kitchen locations.
Each of those brands—including HubSpoke Kitchen as an individual concept itself—is now available for franchising by HubSpoke Brands.
And also for co-branding.
Next week, for example, the first co-branded location of Wayback Burgers and Molte Pizza is opening in New Jersey, with two more co-branded locations to come in Connecticut.
These co-branded units will operate as one restaurant with two menus that can be ordered off any channel. For dine-in customers, the interior branding will represent HubSpoke Brands, said Eucalitto, rather than Wayback or Molte specifically.
HubSpoke Brands will also play host to an app, and a loyalty program that will include all of the brands, which all share the same tech stack.
The Detroit-style pie at Molte Pizza.
The goal, said Eucalitto, was to give Wayback franchisees more options for growth while still keeping them in the family.
Many Wayback franchisees are multi-brand operators. “We learned a lot listening to them,” he said. “We’d see their struggles.”
If they had four brands, for example, they would be going to four conferences, dealing with four regional directors of operations, and having conversations and meetings with four different concepts.
“It’s a challenge,” he said. “So the thought is, let’s put them together.”
Rather than watching franchisees fill a market with Wayback, and then be forced to go outside the system to find opportunities to grow, “why not give them an opportunity to develop another brand that’s ours,” he said.
Though Wayback Burgers is almost entirely franchised, now HubSpoke Brands is looking to test the newer brands as standalone locations out on the street, to work out the kinks. The first standalones will be company-operated.
“Every brand, as we go down the list, we’re going to see, will it work as a co-brand? Will it work as a standalone? Or is it only going to work in a HubSpoke Kitchen, or to utilize some of those products in some of the other brands,” Eucalitto said.
For now, potential franchisees can experience the brands out of the HubSpoke Kitchen in Wallingford, though that location is being renovated into an innovation center and commissary, in addition to serving the public, Eucalitto said.
Franchising changed after the pandemic, said Eucalitto.
Companies like Blue Apron and Wonder have brought new models into play that create efficiencies with shared kitchens and technology.
Eucalitto’s background includes years of franchising the Blimpie’s brand as well as Edible Arrangements in the early days. In fact, the latter is another company building a portfolio of brands with the recent acquisition of Roti Modern Mediterranean out of bankruptcy. Roti has joined Edible Arrangements and Edibles.com under the recently launched Edible Brands platform.
Eucalitto said HubSpoke Brands is “in the right spot because we’re driven for different reasons than some of the companies that are driven by private equity.
“We’re a humble group. We’re a low-key group,” he said. “We’ve got some great people with a lot of franchising experience.”
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