Multi-brand better-for-you operator WOWorks has opened 23 restaurants through September 2026 and has 15 more in active development, pushing its total footprint to nearly 240 units. The pace puts the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based parent of Saladworks, Frutta Bowls, Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh, Barberitos, The Simple Greek, and Zoup! Eatery on track for close to 40 openings by December—a unit-count milestone with direct implications for kitchen design, equipment procurement, and dealer pipeline activity across the chain's franchise network.
Co-Brand Kitchen Strategy
Nearly half of the 2026 openings are co-branded locations, a build-out model that pairs complementary concepts—Saladworks with Frutta Bowls, and Barberitos with Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh—under a single roof. For equipment specifiers and consultants, the co-brand format presents a compact, high-throughput kitchen challenge: two made-to-order menus must share prep, refrigeration, and serving infrastructure without redundancy. Several existing single-brand sites have also converted by adding Frutta Bowls as a second concept this year, a retrofit strategy that requires cold-prep expansion and potentially additional refrigerated rail or display capacity to accommodate bowl assembly alongside existing salad lines. Operators and equipment dealers working within the WOWorks system should note this conversion path as an ongoing source of mid-cycle kitchen upgrade projects.
Growth spans traditional strip-center and inline retail footprints across Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, Alabama, Virginia, Georgia, Texas, and a first cross-border entry with a Frutta Bowls in Cambridge, Ontario. Non-traditional venues are a notable part of the 2026 push: new units at the University of Georgia's Tate Student Center, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center represent the compact, high-volume kitchen formats common to campus and healthcare foodservice—environments that typically demand equipment with smaller footprints, easy sanitation, and high-cycle durability. These non-traditional sites often operate with tighter utility infrastructure than freestanding restaurants, making energy-efficient cooking and refrigeration equipment a practical specification priority.
Dealer and Specifier Implications
CEO Kelly Roddy framed the expansion as demand-driven: "Consumers today want food that fits their life: fresh, customizable and genuinely good for them. That's exactly what WOWorks was built for, and it's why our brands are resonating with guests from coast to coast as we open new doors nearly every week in a multitude of venues." From a channel perspective, the franchise-led growth model means individual franchisee groups—such as the Zack and Crystal Mixon 10-unit development agreement in North Carolina—are the primary equipment buyers, typically working through regional dealers and foodservice equipment reps to build out kitchens that meet WOWorks' brand standards.
For dealers and manufacturer reps active in fast-casual and better-for-you segments, the WOWorks pipeline represents a steady stream of new-build and conversion projects centered on cold-prep tables, refrigerated display, blast-chilled produce handling, and light cooking equipment suited to salad, bowl, and wrap assembly. As fast-casual cold-prep kitchen design continues to evolve around customizable menu formats, operators like WOWorks are among the most active drivers of equipment specification activity in the segment. The company is actively recruiting franchisees, signaling that the development pipeline is expected to remain open well into 2027.
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.
