🔒Wayback Burgers franchisor to expand into multiple new restaurant concepts

The Connecticut company behind Wayback Burgers is launching a new franchising concept that includes multiple fast-casual restaurant brands. Wallingford-based Jake’s Franchising is rebranding itself as Wayback Franchising, and also creating a new platform called Hubspoke Brands, which will roll out five new restaurant concepts designed to complement the Wayback Burgers brand. The combined operation now has 64 employees. Wayback has some 182 franchise locations across the country in 33 states. In Connecticut, 10 franchisees own 20 locations. The company opened a facility known as Hubspoke Kitchen in Wallingford two years ago. Hubspoke has served as an incubator for the new brands: a pizza restaurant called Molte Pizze; sandwich and salad brand Pane & Mozz; Citta Pasta; barbecue restaurant Uncle Willie’s Smokehouse; and a taco and bowl concept called Taculto. “Wayback Burgers continues to be the cornerstone of our portfolio, and with the introduction of Hubspoke Brands, we’re building on that success by creating a modernized approach to franchising that gives owners more choices, greater flexibility and even more opportunity to grow,” said John Eucalitto, CEO of Wayback Franchising.

The strategy is to give franchisees the opportunity to operate multiple brands that can be co‑located or clustered in the same neighborhood, creating synergies without competing on similar food concepts. “Maybe they can have three of the brands and then have the crossover of staffing and regional managers that can be cross-trained by one franchisor, and use one back-of-house system,” he said. “It definitely makes the opportunity for the franchisees much more efficient.” Eucalitto said that the Hubspoke Kitchen concept is also intended to be scalable to work as a commissary facility for a franchisee running multiple brands.

The Connecticut launch of the new brands will occur in Bridgeport, where an existing franchisee will open a new location with a Molte Pizze restaurant and a Wayback Burgers. The same combination will be created in a shopping center redevelopment in Orange. Meanwhile, a franchisee in Emerson, New Jersey will also combine Wayback and Molte Pizze. The initial fee for a Wayback Burgers franchise is $35,000. The estimated initial investment for a typical Wayback Burgers restaurant ranges between $550,000 to $650,000 and includes line items such as restaurant construction, kitchen equipment, furniture, signage, point-of-sale operating system and opening food inventory, the company said. Wayback Burgers generated an estimated $181 million in revenues in 2024, according to an estimate by foodservice industry tracker Technomic Inc. Eucalitto says the next restaurant concept to be rolled out will be Pane & Mozz later this year. “We’ve put a lot of time with the staff developing the systems, the manuals, the quick reference guides, the marketing materials,” he said. “We’re well into the seven figures of investment into it.”