How the Georgia owner of McAlister’s Deli, Cinnabon and Moe’s adapts to change

And it has — GoTo Foods, which owns Moe’s Southwest Grill, Schlotzsky’s and mall food court fixtures like Auntie Anne’s and Cinnabon, has expanded its physical footprint significantly over the last five years, in both the U.S. and abroad. In 2023, the company reported $5.7 billion in retail sales in its brand portfolio. The following year, the company hit another sales milestone: McAlister’s Deli was the first of its brands to reach $1 billion in annual sales.

Further growth is on the horizon for the company. The company signed more than 1,100 franchise agreements in 2024, about half of which were signed internationally. This month, the company announced its first original concept. It’s called Cinnabon Swirl, and it’s a confectionary taking a new spin on treats from Carvel and Cinnabon. GoTo Foods acquired its other brands over the years, while Cinnabon Swirl is its own creation.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution sat down with Holthouser to understand how GoTo is evolving.

Credit: GoTo Foods

Credit: GoTo Foods

Breaking out of the food court

Over the past five years, American shopping malls have faced significant headwinds. Store traffic was declining as consumers began to shop online more frequently. The pandemic only hurt retailers further as shoppers ceased leaving the house altogether.

Many lower-tier malls across the U.S. have shut their doors, but malls aren’t going extinct. Visits to shopping centers have rebounded over the last few years. In the first quarter of 2021, visits were down by nearly 30% from the first quarter of 2019, according to data from location analytics firm Placer.ai. During the same period in 2024, they were down by 5%.

Still, Holthouser points out, developers aren’t itching to build new malls. GoTo Foods has been figuring out ways to get their mall-based brands, such as Auntie Anne’s or Cinnabon, outside of food courts and into brick-and-mortar stores. But it’s not as easy as putting the brand in a street-side or strip mall location. The average gross sales generated by an Auntie Anne’s, for instance, is not sufficient enough justify the rents, Holthouser said.

Where it does work, however, is when you add a second brand. This is called co-branding — when two restaurant brands operate under one kitchen and offer a streamlined menu.

“That’s really where you find all the economic unlocks for the owner,” Holthouser said. “With two products to sell in the same real estate, the owner can cast a much wider net into the market.”

This strategy has also helped GoTo Foods expand the reach of regional brands, such as Jamba, which is well-known on the West Coast, or Carvel, which is more popular in the Northeast. The company has used co-branding as a way to add Jamba locations east of the Mississippi and Carvel locations in Texas and Oklahoma. The company completed more than 300 co-brand deals last year.

In the food and beverage industry, it’s all about being accessible, said Tim Halloran, a longtime consumer marketer and professor at Georgia Tech who has done consulting work with quick service brands. A brand wants to not make their customer work too hard to get to them.

“The more locations that a brand can have that are nontraditional, the better,” Halloran said. “So when they have a choice, it’s easy for them to get to you.”

Leaning into loyalty to retain customers

In 2020, the company had 5 million loyalty members across its seven brands. It’s aiming to finish this year with more than 30 million.

Loyalty programs are not about awareness and trial, Halloran said. They’re designed to get customers back into the door and eat and drink more often.

GoTo Foods wants to extend the loyalty experience beyond emails or perks in an app and allow it to come to life in the restaurant. For example, at McAlister’s Deli, loyalty members receive a different colored order card than ordinary customers. A store manager can then identify which customers are loyalty members and approach them to thank them for coming back into the restaurant. Cashiers can also see that they’re a loyalty member as they’re placing an order, and can reward them for their business with a cookie or another small item.

“It’s a series of very low cost, simple-to-execute things. That brand, after we turned it on, the customer satisfaction jumped about four to five points,” Holthouser said.

The apps for each of GoTo’s brands themselves have changed. Instead of functioning independently of one another, the apps operate under one core platform the company built. Now, new functionalities can be added seamlessly across each app, reducing the time and money needed to complete this task individually. Plus, it doesn’t cost a fortune to build an app or website for a future brand.

“That’s how we give the brand so much more than they could ever hope to get on their own,” Holthouser said. “Said in another way: that’s how we are leveraging scale in a big way.”

Expanding its international footprint

GoTo Foods has a fast-growing international arm. In 2024, the company said it signed 599 agreements internationally.

About a third of the company’s annual sales comes internationally, and about two-thirds of the restaurants in its pipeline that are preparing to open are outside of the U.S. The company has more than 2,100 units across more than 65 countries and territories.

“Increasingly, this is becoming not just an Atlanta-based company or a predominantly U.S.-based operation, but it’s becoming more and more global over time,” Holthouser said.

The international locations of their brands are not carbon copies of their U.S. stores. Each brand has to go through a “pretty painstaking” process of understanding the customer, Holthouser said. Products are modified to fit local tastes. For example, in the U.S., some Cinnabon rolls are topped with pecans. In the Middle East, they’re topped with pistachios. Locations of Moe’s in parts of Europe or the Middle East do not have the same assembly-line ordering system as locations in the U.S. Some international Moe’s locals also sell margaritas, which cannot be found in the U.S.

Credit: GoTo Foods

Credit: GoTo Foods

As the world becomes increasingly globalized, this strategy has become more of a focus for many brands, Halloran said. It’s another way to engage and interact with the consumer, and it’s likely that people who live in other countries are already familiar with the brand through social media and the internet at large.

Keeping an eye on tariffs, inflation

Inflation, supply chain challenges and uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s tariffs have made operating any business difficult over the last few months. According to a statement in April from the National Restaurant Association, the biggest concerns for restaurant operators overall are that tariffs will hike food and packaging costs and add uncertainty to managing availability, while pushing prices up for consumers.

Holthouser said the company is keeping a close eye on tariffs. Once they land, they’ll figure it out, he said.

“Particularly [in] this industry, you always have a plan B,” Holthouser said. “If you can’t get a product from Mexico or whatever, in most cases, we have a plan B.”

GoTo Foods franchisees have the autonomy to set prices. But the company gives guidance and can suggest where they should be landing relative to competition. If franchisees overshoot on pricing, demand can be impacted and the customer’s perception of the restaurant’s value declines, Holthouser said.

“You don’t win very long in business when you’re disappointing customers,” Holthouser said.