Restaurant professionals and brothers Dhavel and Hetal Patel have signed a master franchise agreement to open 20-plus Freshii stores in parts of New York City. The Patels already own and operate seven Dunkin' Donuts restaurants in northern New Jersey.
"There is obviously a huge trend towards healthier eating, and we had to figure out how to intelligently expand our franchise holdings in that direction," Hetal said. "After meeting with Matthew Corrin, Freshii's founder, seeing the Freshii restaurants first hand, eating the food and witnessing the high volumes in relatively small spaces, we knew we wanted in and we knew we wanted as much of NYC as we could get."
The brothers expect to open the first location by early 2010.
Freshii's menu includes salads, burritos, wraps, rice bowls, yogurts and soups in a "build your own" format, served in a fast, fun, hip and environmentally sustainable atmosphere. Freshii restaurants range in size from 150- to 1,500-square-foot kiosk inline locations and are a blend of high-volume fresh customized meals, grab-and-go and gourmet snack food.
