Dive Brief:

• Focus Brands has rebranded to GoTo Foods, the company said in a release emailed to Restaurant Dive on Tuesday. FocusBrands.com now redirects to GoToFoods.com.
• CEO Jim Holthouser announced the change at the company’s biennial franchisee conference, and framed it as a way to emphasize the value of its brands — Moe’s Southwest Grill, Auntie Anne’s, Carvel, Cinnabon, Jamba, Schlotzky’s and McAlister’s Deli — to franchisees and consumers.
• GoTo Foods, owned by Roark Capital since it folded Carvel, Cinnabon and Seattle’s Best Coffee into a single company in 2004, has been working with Subway, which Roark is in the process of acquiring, to support the rollout of new snack foods across the sandwich giant’s stores.

Dive Insight:

GoTo said the rebranding “signals the company’s continued transformation into a platform company.”

According to the press release, since Holthouser’s accession to the CEO post in 2020, the executive leadership team has “prioritized the need to simplify, streamline, and strengthen the company by breaking down silos and building enhanced, centralized systems and capabilities.”

Over the last two years, GoTo Foods increased its focus on multi-brand unit development, taking advantage of the broad variety of concepts in its portfolio. The company undertook a series of changes to its leadership team in 2023. In January of that year, GoTo appointed a new chief brand officer at Auntie Anne’s and two executives in development and real estate. In February 2023, the chain appointed Nandu Gandhi as chief technology officer to continue building up its digital infrastructure and sales. The company named a new international president and a chief brand officer for Jamba in May, before hiring another three executives in a variety of roles in October.

The company said changes to its strategy in 2023 “resulted in the rationalization of hundreds of SKUs across brands, [and] paid media spend more than doubled the previous year.”

Auntie Anne’s and Cinnabon’s work with Subway could foreshadow further GoTo’s efforts to make use of the diversity of its menu items and snacks, especially as competition heats up between QSR chains for snacking dollars.

GoTo’s performance in 2023 included the opening of 398 new units and the signing of over 1,150 franchise agreements, according to the press release, marking a significant growth year for the brand platform.