Marco's Pizza is accelerating its brick-and-mortar and non-traditional kitchen pipeline heading into the back half of 2026, with plans to open more than 80 new locations this year after adding more than 60 stores in 2025. The Toledo, Ohio-based chain, which now operates over 1,200 locations across 35 states, posted U.S. systemwide sales of $1.09 billion in 2025, up from $1.05 billion the prior year, according to QSR Magazine's 2026 QSR 50 ranking — a list Marco's has appeared on for three consecutive years.
Ghost Kitchens and Flexible Formats
A notable operational thread in Marco's 2025 expansion was its explicit push into ghost kitchens and other flexible back-of-house formats, giving franchisees lower-barrier entry points for new markets without the full footprint of a traditional pizzeria buildout. That strategy aligns with broader commissary and ghost kitchen trends reshaping how pizza and QSR brands approach kitchen capital investment. The brand's multi-unit development agreement in New Jersey — where a new franchisee is targeting at least eight locations across New Jersey and New York City's five boroughs — signals that high-density urban markets, where flexible kitchen formats are often the only viable option, are firmly in the growth plan.
International kitchen buildouts also continued in 2025, with the brand marking one year of operations in Mexico under master franchisee Grupo Pizza Amantes SA de CV and ten years in the Caribbean.
Operations Center of Excellence
To support the 80-plus-unit opening target, Marco's is developing what it calls an Operations Center of Excellence — an infrastructure investment aimed at standardizing kitchen operations and enabling franchisees to scale efficiently. The initiative, paired with continued investment in AI-powered technology and digital ordering platforms, reflects a larger industry pattern: fast-growing QSR brands are centralizing operational oversight to reduce variability across a distributed kitchen fleet. For equipment specifiers and dealers working the pizza segment, a growing, operationally focused franchisor typically means tighter equipment standards and stronger prototype kitchen specs rolled out system-wide.
On the leadership side, the brand added Chief Financial Officer Bill Schaffler, Chief Marketing Officer Steve Kennedy, and Vice President of Franchise Growth Brad Smith in 2025 to reinforce finance, marketing, and development functions as the system scales.
"2025 was about disciplined growth — entering new states, expanding internationally, and investing in the people and infrastructure that will carry us into our next phase," said Gerardo Flores, Chief Development Officer of Marco's Pizza.
For dealers and foodservice equipment consultants tracking QSR kitchen buildout activity, Marco's trajectory — ghost kitchen flexibility layered over a centralizing operations model — is worth watching as the chain targets the 1,300-store milestone before year's end. The brand's Franchise Disclosure Document reports a $1.28M average unit volume for the top 25% of franchised stores in 2025, a figure that supports continued franchisee investment in kitchen equipment and store builds.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
