We help create successful brands.
From Blaze Pizza to Fatburger to now Dave's Hot Chicken, we have helped some of the fastest growing, well-recognized food brands in North America.
Each concept was on a high growth trajectory and asked Geared to help build the necessary brand assets, such as concept development, four-wall marketing, and franchise library building.
If you are an existing concept or starting from scratch and would like to connect with an experienced team of brand builders — let's chat and learn more about each other. We look forward to hearing from you.
Blaze Pizza
There’s so much to the Blaze story. For the first year, we worked very closely with the founders, Rick and Elise Wetzel (yes, the same Wetzels from Wetzel’s Pretzels). They assembled an amazingly talented team, and over the years, we helped create nearly every piece of content – from location graphics to marketing and advertising. In 2017, they reached $185 million in system-wide sales and stood #1 in Fast Casual’s Top Movers & Shakers list. Again, #1 in 2022, they were named the #1 Fast Casual Brand in the Entrepreneur Franchise 500 ranking, as well as in Fast Casual’s Top 100 Movers and Shakers list. Today, the company has 295 restaurants in North America, 18 in Canada, and the rest in the United States.
At the 2022 Franchise Innovation Awards, Blaze Pizza’s customer loyalty app was named a winner in two separate categories: Loyalty App and Most Innovative Use of Data.
Dave's Hot Chicken
Fresh into our new relationship with DHC and flooded with a volume of past Blaze ex-pats – we were tapped to “do it again” for this new up-and-comer in the Nashville hot chicken concept sector. Check it out – they earned a place on the Lunchbox top 30 Hottest Restaurant Brands and the top spot on the Fast Casual Movers & Shakers list in 2023, then second place on Fast Casual Movers & Shakers in 2024. In 2023, sales nearly doubled, with 100% sales growth, and reached domestic systemwide sales of $406 million, according to Technomic’s Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report.
Fatburger
At one point, we had a 15-year relationship with the famous L.A. burger icon. Back in the day, when they had no food photography, no clue who they were (voice to the customer), and no franchisee support infrastructure. As much as the brand had been around since 1952, it was a complete overall in terms of brand building. Then the housing market tanked, and Fatburger hit some challenging times. Fast forward roughly four years; we got a call from the CEO asking us to come back and help them break into the Middle East as the brand was making a huge comeback.
Interested?
We realized there are many branding groups happy to talk to you. But there is a reason why so many very successful companies picked Geared. Look forward to chatting.