Outstanding Operator: Craveworthy Brands

Craveworthy Brands is Food On Demand’s next Outstanding Operator.

The multi-concept platform partners with new and emerging fast-casual brands to help them grow. Founded in 2022 by Gregg Majewski, the company brings together a stacked portfolio of options for its franchisees to expand in their existing territories.

Craveworthy is the parent company of several brands, including Genghis Grill, BD’s Mongolian Grill and Flat Top Grill, as well as Budlong Southern Chicken, Wing It On, Krafted Burger Bar + Tap and Dirty Dough.

In November, the company partnered with C3 to build the franchisee platform for the Mediterranean concept Soom Soom. Craveworthy is also developing virtual brands that include Lucky Cat Poke Company, a fast-casual poke concept with 55 ghost kitchens. In totality, the brands operate in 24 states.

Tech-heavy focus

With an array of brands under its umbrella, the company uses several technologies for management, streamlining orders, and delivering customer satisfaction.

Most recently, the company converted all of its legacy stores’ POS (point-of-sales) systems over to Toast to better manage its omnichannel presence.

Craveworthy’s Chief Growth & Development Officer Jeremy Theisen says the move accommodates multiple menus and brands under one POS structure.

Craveworthy Brands is the parent company of several brands including Dirty Dough, Wing It On, Genghis Grill and Budlong Southern Chicken.

“It allows us to inject any technologies that we want across all of our brands,” said Theisen. “It’s not just about the economies of scale pricing…but being able to support any third-party integration that we want to put in that restaurant.”

Craveworthy also deploys technology through Flybuy for efficient quote times. The technology gives restaurants real-time updates on customer arrivals, enabling staff to prepare orders just in time for pickup and predict the arrival time of incoming delivery drivers.

“We want that order done as close to the pickup time as possible so that food arrives hot and ready for our customers, we don’t want it sitting,” said Theisen.

Keeping customers happy

Knowing how important it is to respond to customer reviews, Craveworthy taps Ovation to collect guest feedback across channels.

The platform makes it easy to respond to reviews, providing real-time chat, reporting and other features to connect with guests and improve operations.

Craveworthy Brands chief growth & development officer Jeremy Theisen

Theisen says they respond to every single review that comes in. “Because those feed into how you rank and place on all third-party websites.”

Confidence in virtual brands

Looking ahead, Theisen says the company is focusing on growing its virtual brands on first-party ordering (powered by Olo), third-party, and catering (powered by EzCater).

Theisen remains confident in the success of their virtual brands despite others in the space facing headwinds.

“What is unique for us, unlike some of the historic virtual brands out there that create a virtual brand and operate it out of other people’s restaurants, we will only be running these out of our restaurants, so we own the branding, operations, the marketing, we own that customer experience from end-to-end,” he said.

Theisen adds, “We will never take our brands and farm them out…at the end of the day, there’s just a different level of pride when you send food out the door with our logo on it.”

Collaboration drives growth

In addition, Theisen says he looks forward to continue collaborating with Majewski.

Craveworthy Brands CEO and founder Gregg Majewski

The duo combines Majewski’s expertise in finance and operations from his days as CEO of Jimmy Johns and Theisen’s extensive knowledge of marketing and restaurant technology from his time at companies such as Punchh.

“We have such a complementary skill set and we work so well together, every time we take on a new brand, it’s just so exciting because we both have the individual playbooks that come together and we just see immediate results with these brands,” said Theisen.