Franchising

WOWorks hits 2021 growth spurt

Provided

January 13, 2022

WOWorks, which is made up of Saladworks, Frutta Bowls, Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh and The Simple Greek, added 60 restaurants and signed 28 franchise agreements in 2021.

"With our restaurants having the ability and flexibility to work in a variety of locations and footprints, we are attracting new entrepreneurs looking to get into the fast-casual industry and multi-unit operators looking to expand their portfolio and diversify with our proven, profitable concepts," Kelly Roddy, CEO of WOWorks, said in a company press release. "With a number of newly signed franchise deals this past year, we will continue this momentum of strong growth through a mix of restaurant formats in non-traditional and traditional channels well into 2022."

He also listed a few milestones and key accomplishments in the past year, which included:

• Among the 60 WOWorks restaurants that opened, nearly 48% were in non-traditional settings.
• Opened 15 locations in Canada.
• Opened 17 ghost kitchens locations and 10 combo kitchen locations.
• 18% of non-traditional openings were in grocery stores, including the first franchisee-owned store-within-a-store Frutta Bowls restaurant in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
• With seven Saladworks and four Frutta Bowls, the company opened 11 store-within-a-store restaurants at grocery locations.
• Besides traditional stand-alone restaurant development, it opened six co-branded restaurant locations.

Fully owned by Centre Lane Partners, WOWorks was formed in 2020.