It has been nearly a year since Focus Brands rebranded to GoTo Foods, and, according to CEO Jim Holthouser, this strategic move created a unified platform that has bolstered each of the brands, though he believes the best days for the portfolio company are still ahead.
In February 2024, Focus Brands announced the company’s rebranding to GoTo Foods, which represented more than just a name change. The company also announced a portfolio-wide partnership with point of sale provider, Qu, which was intended to unify each of the seven brands under one digital platform. The goal, Holthouser said, was to un-silo the GoTo Foods brands so that they could share a digital infrastructure, while still maintaining the individuality of brands including Auntie Anne’s, Jamba, and Cinnabon.
“We're building this, this digital platform that is almost like a master app or a master website, and all we're doing is replicating that seven different times and then changing out the menu and colors and brand personality,” Holthouser said. “We can give these brands world-class apps at a far lower cost because we’re doing it all together.”
McAlister’s Deli was the “guinea pig” brand that was the first to launch a new app and website under the new digital infrastructure. Since that launched earlier this year, McAlister’s Deli became the first GoTo Foods brand to become a billion-dollar brand in March, and Holthouser said is also leading loyalty sales growth across the portfolio by implementing what he calls the “four-wall strategy.”
“When you walk into a McAlister’s and you identify yourself as a loyalty member, all of a sudden the experience starts to change,” Holthouser said. “When you order your food, staff identifies your table with an orange card (while non-loyalty members get black). Now the staff walking through the dining room knows who the loyalty members are and thanks them for their business and can add little moments of surprise and delight, like surprising them with a cookie.”
This strategy has increased loyalty memberships for McAlister’s Deli, and now every GoTo Foods brand is in the process of similarly upgrading its web, mobile, and loyalty experience. By the end of 2024, Moe’s Southwest Grill and Jamba will get their mobile and web makeovers, with the rest of the brands joining in 2025. Although the rollout is still ongoing, Holthouser said it has already made a major difference in loyalty memberships.
“When I first came here [in 2020] we had five million loyalty members and now we have 25 million, so that’s five times the relationships we can manage,” he said. “Loyalty is not just an email program or app notifications, it’s all-encompassing.”
GoTo Foods has been upgrading its loyalty program by encompassing more consumer data to personalize customer experiences. Although Holthouser said the brands are still in the beginning stages of their data capabilities, he stresses how important it is for foodservice brands to not only identify each customer but to be able to offer different experiences based on ordering history, preferences, and behaviors.
“QSR is a very crowded and brutally competitive industry,” he said. “I’ve always believed that he or she who knows the customer best, wins. We have become a very data-driven company, and not just through our loyalty program. We collect a million detailed surveys every year across our brands on how we are doing…and then having the data is great, but you have to put it to work.”
This is what GoTo Foods still has to work on, he said, because although the company is collecting data on consumer experiences and preferences, it is still fragmented and sits in dozens of different places. But Holthouser is confident that the company will be able to parse through the data and “win the hearts and wallets” of customers more than competitors.
Moving forward, the goal is to get to 50 million loyalty members and also roll out new features like subscription programs for Moe’s queso, much like the McAlister’s Deli Tea Pass. Holthouser even envisions a program where you can, for instance, get Cinnabon delivered to your house once a month.
“The beauty of a unified digital platform is not just the ability to deliver better websites and apps at lower costs,” he said. “Consumer expectations aren't static; they're constantly changing. They want more out of you all the time. and you have to figure out how to deliver that. In the past, anytime we wanted to change some functionality to a website or an app, we had to do it seven separate times, and now we can do it once. and all seven brands will get it overnight.”
Coming up next for GoTo Foods? Group ordering functionality, which will be rolled out to all seven brands in February or Mach of next year. Besides technology, the company is also focused on development, particularly in international markets. In developing new stores, the company will continue to focus on its sweet spot of non-traditional locations in airports and malls, as well as rolling out cobranded standalone locations, with various combinations of Cinnabon, Auntie Anne’s, Jamba, and Carvel.
The next big question for GoTo Foods is, “when is the right time to acquire more brands?” While the portfolio company is still on the lookout for new acquisitions, Holthouser said it has to be the right fit and not duplicative of concepts are already have in the portfolio. One thing is for certain: The new GoTo Foods digital infrastructure could easily handle nine or 10 or even 20 brands.
“It’s very scalable,” Holthouser said. “It can handle whatever we want to do.”
Contact Joanna at [email protected]
