Wayback Burgers has transformed from a single chain to a diverse, multi-brand franchise platform in one fell swoop.
On Thursday, the company unveiled Hubspoke Brands, a collection of six new restaurants geared toward building out a franchisee’s portfolio. The group features pizza concept Molte Pizze, Italian concept Citta Pasta, sandwich concept Pane & Mozz, Mexican concept Taculto, and barbecue concept Uncle Willie’s Smokehouse. There is also Hubspoke Kitchen, a virtual dining hall comprising all the concepts (including Wayback) under one roof, which is currently open in Wallingford, Connecticut.
The idea is for operators to either franchise one of the brands as a standalone unit or open a new co-branded store with a Wayback. Franchisees will have an opportunity in the future to franchise the Hubspoke Kitchen concept as well.
“We have franchisees that come from all walks of brands, and every time we meet with them and talk to them, I hear stories of, well, at this brand we do it this way, but yet the other guy comes in three weeks later and he tells me something else from another brand,” says John Eucalitto, CEO of Wayback Franchising. “And it’s just difficult to deal with going to three conventions and three regional directors of operations and three marketing teams and three different approaches. And we’ve learned a lot listening because we do a lot of listening to our franchisees and to other brands. And we ultimately decided that we’re very passionate about food and we love to eat. And over the years, we’ve come up with six different brands that we felt we can develop and utilize our existing franchisee base.”
A franchised Wayback and Molte Pizze co-branded store is scheduled to open next week in Emerson, New Jersey. Two others are scheduled to debut in Orange and Bridgeport, Connecticut. Italian for “many pizzas,” Molte Pizze offers three styles: crispy tavern, foldable New York, and cheesy, caramelized Detroit.
“We would open up the back of the house to make it one, but the consumer in the front of the house would see two different brands,” Eucalitto says. “But then you’ve got one manager, but [guests] can order from each of the brands and pick up at the same time.”
A standalone, company-run Pane and Mozz restaurant will open in Wallingford, not too far away from the existing Hubspoke Kitchen, which will serve as a commissary. The brand offers Italian-style focaccia sandwiches layered with premium meats, cheeses, and fresh toppings.
All future co-branded restaurants will be new instead of an existing Wayback restaurant tacking on another concept. As Eucalitto explains, “They’d have to really sell us hard on how we can incorporate something into an existing Wayback and make it successful because you’re known as a Wayback … We want each brand to stand on their own. That’s the goal.”
Additionally, the Pane & Mozz corporate location will eventually be turned over to a franchisee.
“We’ll tweak it, make sure it’s operating properly, and then we’ll hand it to a franchisee,” Eucalitto says. “Every time we take over a location, we get it so it’s stable. Obviously over the years you take back a location, so we get it to break even and stable, and every time we give it to a franchisee, the sales go up 50 percent, 100 percent. That’s who [our franchisees] are. We know our limitations, and we’re better at building things than we are operating them. We train them on how to do it, but we need to be the support. We have one customer. That’s our franchisee. That’s it. So we need to manage them and help them.”
The company has been dabbling in alternative brands since before COVID, trying to understand how they could all mold together. All were created by the culinary minds behind Wayback, except for Uncle Willie’s, which has been around Connecticut for 35-plus years and entered a partnership with Wayback a decade ago.
Over the years, the company underwent several tests, like attempting to install Uncle Willie’s as a co-brand inside an existing corporate restaurant in 2018 and 2019 and doing the same with Taculto. Wayback also tried deploying food trucks offering multiple concepts at the 2018 franchise convention.
The rest of the concepts came along amid the pandemic, setting up Wayback for the opening of Hubspoke Kitchen in 2023 inside an 8,000-square-foot former Italian deli/restaurant. During testing, the company found customers ordering pizzas, burgers, salads, and tacos together. It also found significant growth in pre-prepared meals for those who may want a burger but also take home a bag of pasta. Wayback, Molte Pizze, and Pane & Mozz performed the best out of all the concepts.
“That’s our thought process going forward where you can build the HubSpoke Kitchen where everything is incorporated into one and you can also take the individual brands and put them on the street where maybe you can’t go with all of the brands,” Eucalitto says. “There may be an existing McDonald’s, there may be an existing Jersey Mike’s, there may be an existing Chipotle. But if we can capture one or two or three of the brands there and then as tenants leave, maybe we’re the first in line to get the next, so it’s an opportunity to grow a little differently.”
While Molte Pizze and Pane & Mozz are ready for growth as standalones, the company plans to go slower with the other concepts.
“You’re competing in a different environment there,” Eucalitto says. “It’s a more difficult environment for some of those brands, but together [as co-brands] that makes sense or maybe in nontraditional locations, whether it’s airports or colleges and truck stops and more of a food court environment for the fresh pastas and the tacos and the burritos and things like that. So we’ve been working on it for a long time.”
