Kevin Blackwell is chairman and CEO of privately held Kahala Corporation. Recent acquisitions include Cold Stone Creamery, Blimpie, and Cereality, bringing its total store count to about 4,600 units, operated by 3,000 franchisees. Additional Kahala brands are The Great Steak & Potato Co., Johnnie’s NY Pizzeria, and Wafflo, among others.

Robert W. D’Loren is CEO of NexCen Brands, a vertically integrated brand-acquisition and management firm. NexCen owns the Maggie Moo’s, Marble Slab, Pretzel Time, and Pretzelmaker brands. Together with NexCen’s holdings in the retail and consumer products spaces, those brands total more than 1,500 franchised stores with retail sales in excess of $1.2 billion.

Steve LaMastra is president and COO of Raving Brands, a portfolio company with more than 300 franchise partners and more than 1,000 units in development. The company plans to have more than 2,000 units by 2010. Brands include Shane’s Rib Shack, Flying Biscuit, Doc Green’s Gourmet Salads, and Mama Fu’s Asian House, among others.

Steve Romaniello is president and CEO of FOCUS Brands Inc., and president of Schlotzsky’s. FOCUS Brands franchises and operates more than 2,100 ice cream stores, bakeries, restaurants, and cafes in the U.S. and internationally. Brand names include Carvel, Cinnabon, Schlotzsky’s, and Moe’s Southwest Grill. The company is also the franchisor of Seattle’s Best Coffee on military bases and in certain international markets.

David Rutkauskas is president and CEO of Beautiful Brands International. He and his wife, Camille Rutkauskas, founded Camille’s Sidewalk Café, now part of the Beautiful Brands portfolio along with Coney Beach and FreshBerry Natural Frozen Yogurt. The company has 120 units and 900 more franchises sold and in development. Its goal is to operate at least five concept ventures and 25,000 units by 2015.

Multi-branded, multi-concept operators are expanding the industry’s notions of scale and brand synergy. They are also offering unprecedented packages to franchisees who can mix-and-match concepts to strategically cover geographies, dayparts, and operational competencies. Leaders of five of the industry’s most notable restaurant portfolio companies recently spoke with QSR about ideal growth strategies, smart growth, and the challenges of dovetailing new acquisitions with existing ones.

How does a holding company build a strong foundation?

Romaniello: Focus Brands began with the acquisition of Carvel in 2001. Our goal at that point was to use Carvel as the vehicle to get into the franchised food business, stabilize that system, then use that as a platform to realize our long-term vision of Focus 5. That’s the notion of five brands, 5,000 units, each of which is successful over a five-year period.

Then we set out to build the infrastructure to support that vision. That meant building financial systems, IT systems, and offices, as well as hiring people in excess of what we needed to run the current business. We also hired senior management with skill sets that exceeded our needs at the time.

LaMastra: A portfolio company is only as strong as its various concepts. When you look for a new acquisition, you’re looking for a concept with strong identity, whether it has two or 200 units. You’re looking for something consumers can really identify with and understand. For example, when Raving Brands acquired Flying Biscuit back in 2006, the brand was already a longtime favorite in Atlanta. We liked that because it came to us as an organically grown brand. Everyone in this business knows how hard it is to build a brand. When something’s already built, organically, consumers identify with it immediately.

D’Loren: NexCen has three operational segments: retail franchising, consumer brands, and quick-serve franchising. Our strategy at the 60,000-foot level is to build distribution in our franchised segments, then acquire brands we can sell in both third-party [areas] and our own.

In our quick-serve business, the strategy is to become the leader in the treats category. In the near future, we will be aggressively seeking brands in categories such as cookies, coffee, and doughnuts. We then can take the products from other stores and offer them in our other brands—for instance, we can have a Maggie Moo that sells cookies, pretzels, coffee, and doughnuts, as well as ice cream. In that way, we cover all of the dayparts: coffee and doughnuts in the morning, pretzels during the day, ice cream in the afternoons and evenings. What we want to become across all quick-serve brands is a place for families to come for treats and have a good time together. Our strategy is to dominate the treats sector.

We also aim to take our average unit volumes up to $150,000 by offering additional treats, but [in doing so] we are not going to get away from the theatrics.