Hello!

Today we’re covering:

• What’s inside the Jersey Mike’s S1

• Taco Bell trusts the AI (again)

• The King of New York, the Emperor of Just Salad

Read on…

3 Numbers

890

Taco Bell locations that now have drive-thru AI ordering. The chain has had a roller coaster ride with the technology, first testing it as an early adopter in 2022, rolling it out to more than 100 stores in 2024, then pumping the brakes last year after a video went viral of a customer ordering 18,000 cups of water. Water cup issue now purportedly solved, this expansion by Taco Bell marks one of the largest AI rollouts in the quick-service industry.

$600 million

Amount Wonder is aiming to raise in its latest fundraising round, which would bring the food hall’s total funding to a whopping $2.8 billion. A report by the Information noted that this could be the last fundraising round before the company tests the public market, reportedly in the first quarter of 2028.

45

Points scored in Game 5 of the NBA Finals by Jalen Brunson, who can now also lay claim to being the newest equity investor in Just Salad. In an exceedingly well-timed press release coming just a couple of weeks after Brunson was named Finals MVP, the 125-unit chain said that Brunson’s involvement will include working with the company’s culinary teams and “bringing his competitive mindset” to operations.

The Big Story

Jersey Mike’s is officially going public and reportedly aiming for a $12 billion valuation, which would be one of the industry’s largest-ever IPOs. I browsed the S1 so you didn’t have to. Some notes:

• The S1 confirms the previously reported story that founder Peter Cancro is sticking around as a franchisee. In fact, he’s set to be the system’s largest — he personally holds the master franchise rights for 300 stores in the UK and Ireland through a separate entity, with the first London stores projected for late 2026.

• One possible reason why Cancro is bullish on overseas growth — Jersey Mike’s first international market is going very well, with Canadian stores technically outearning American units. Granted, it’s a significantly smaller sample size (21 stores in Canada vs 3,235 in the US), but Canadian AUVs outpace the US by $200,000. (300 additional stores are currently in development in the Great White North.)

• 1,600 units are in the company’s development pipeline. Its stated total whitespace is 7,500 US stores and 15,000 globally. (Some context: Subway currently has around 16,000 international locations.)

• The number of high-performing stores is growing — stores above $2M AUV grew from under 1% of the system in 2019 to over 6% in 2025. (The average store now does $1.4M.)

• The chain is riding 20 straight years of positive same-store sales growth (including the COVID year).

• Digital is a potential growth vehicle. It’s currently about 42% of occasions but only 23% of transactions are online pickup.

• The marketing war chest exceeds $200 million a year thanks to franchisees paying 5% into the ad fund. (You will be seeing many Jersey Mike’s ads this NFL season.)

• “Bring the Juice” is now a core value enshrined in a federal securities filing.

In the Headlines

• Interesting piece on why publicly traded restaurant tech companies are getting crushed by Wall Street, despite growing revenues. (You’d probably not be surprised to guess that AI is involved.)

• Just a year after launching the McCrispy Strips, McDonald’s is overhauling the recipe and releasing a new hand-breaded version (that looks a bit closer to the old Chicken Selects).

• Wingstop was the country’s fastest growing restaurant chain last year, opening 382 locations. Chipotle and 7Brew were numbers 2 and 3, respectively.

• You’ve probably already missed the brief Wendy’s meme stock rally. The stock — a recent, intense focus of the Wall Street Bets subreddit — popped 25% in one day, saw its trading briefly halted, and has now come back down to earth, losing 15% of its value over the past 10 days.

• The somewhat confusingly named Minor Food — a 2,700-unit operator in Asia-Pacific — is going public on the Singapore stock exchange in what’s expected to be the largest food-and-beverage listing there in years. The company operates 130 Burger King units.

• Why Hot Dog on a Stick’s new owner made a bid for the company that was “probably more than it was worth, though it was worth it to me.”

• Las Vegas buffets are decadent, depraved, and disappearing.

• ‘The Family Keeping Watch Over a 52-Year-Old Pot of Soup.’

Name That Chain!

You’ve got three clues to name this issue’s chain:

• Every location of this chain roasts whole turkeys overnight, every night, which makes it the largest restaurant buyer of Butterball turkeys in the world.

• Its most famous menu item — Thanksgiving dinner on a roll, named after the founders' aunt.

• It was founded in 1976 by a brother and sister in a boarded-up building beneath their apartment in Wilmington, Delaware, and named after their grandfather.

Find the answer at the bottom of the email…

Power Moves

Here are some notable recent C-suite moves:

• Russell Weiner is retiring as Domino’s CEO and becoming executive chairman of the chain’s board. Stepping into the head honcho spot: Joe Jordan, who has been with Domino’s for almost 15 years.

• Dan Harmon — former head of Playa Bowls — has been leading the 8-unit Pizzana since December. (Pizzana rocks, can attest.)

• Tatte Bakery & Cafe vet Scott Nelson is in as Buffalo Wild Wings’ new CMO.

• Dairy Queen hired Phil Crawford — formerly of CKE Restaurants and Shake Shack — as its CTO.

• Bryan Brown is joining McDonald’s as its Chief Development Officer. Brown spent more than a decade as Raising Cane’s head of development.

• Aaron Howard has been tapped as Denny’s new Chief Operating Officer. Howard formerly worked in operations at CKE Restaurants and Cracker Barrel.

• Papa Johns CFO Ravi Thanawala is leaving the company to take a CFO gig elsewhere. Chris Collins is in as interim CFO.

What’s New at FS Supply

If you happened to read the entire Jersey Mike's S1, you'd have noticed that packaging and food safety are among the very first risks the company names in a $12 billion filing, before technology, franchising, and even owner control get a mention. Supply chain comes up over and over again in the document. The filing credits it as a key driver of the 42% cash-on-cash returns franchisees earn, and describes a centralized model where everything from the proprietary bread dough to the private-labeled meats and cheeses ships only from approved providers. A disciplined supply chain has been essential to their story.

That's the same work we do at FS Supply for chains: branded packaging programs with fair pricing, always-in-stock inventory, and distribution through 10+ partners, including Sysco, US Foods, GFS, and PFG. This week alone we moved three branded programs from artwork into production and opened two new distributor lanes.

If packaging orders, freight issues, and stockouts are quietly eating hours at your HQ, that's exactly the problem we take off the plate.

Thanks for reading! I’ll see you again next week.

NAME THAT CHAIN ANSWER: Capriotti’s