--- title: "Emerging Brands, Nontraditional Growth and Practical Scaling: Top Operators Reveal Strategies for Sustainable Expansion" url: https://burnaze.com/article/c9f94478-df02-462c-87b9-523cc82759f4 source: "Franchise Times" original_url: https://www.franchisetimes.com/franchise_news/emerging-brands-nontraditional-growth-and-practical-scaling-top-operators-reveal-strategies-for-sustainable-expansion/article_9153e792-1d3f-40c9-83ed-b2e1f67c47cb.html category: "Staffing" industry: "Business Services" segment: "Staffing" topics: ["Finance & M&A","Development & multi-unit","Marketing"] published: 2026-11-11T19:30:00.000Z modified: 2026-11-13T12:01:40.265Z image: https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/franchisetimes.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/1a/01ae0c7e-087d-4fbf-bf03-d4a301b76ba6/6af4b63b5b31b.image.jpg?crop=1763%2C926%2C0%2C124&resize=1200%2C630&order=crop%2Cresize --- # Emerging Brands, Nontraditional Growth and Practical Scaling: Top Operators Reveal Strategies for Sustainable Expansion **TL;DR:** Top operators share strategies for sustainable expansion, including focusing on fundamentals and empowering employees. *originally published in Franchise Times on 2026-11-11. [Read the original](https://www.franchisetimes.com/franchise_news/emerging-brands-nontraditional-growth-and-practical-scaling-top-operators-reveal-strategies-for-sustainable-expansion/article_9153e792-1d3f-40c9-83ed-b2e1f67c47cb.html).* ## Story Former New York Jets cornerback Ray Mickens learned a lot over his 10 seasons in the NFL. Twenty years after retiring, Mickens still heeds advice from his former coach, Bill Belichick. Only now, it’s off the football field and instead applied to Mickens’ operational portfolio at food, beverage and retail company M2 Concepts. “I talk to my team and leadership about just focusing on the fundamentals,” Mickens said. “Blocking and tackling, as Belichick would say.” Mickens joined Nicolas Mindel, chairman and chief growth officer of West Coast Cakery; John Rigos, co-CEO of Aurify Kingstar (formerly Aurify Brands); and moderator Cindy McLoughlin, managing partner at CohnReznick, during a panel at the Restaurant Finance & Development Conference November 10 in Las Vegas focusing on how franchisees can tackle strategic growth and nontraditional expansion M2 Concepts has honed in on nontraditional growth—it operates in nine airports—and expanded with restaurant franchises including Panda Express, Chick-fil-A, Einstein Bros Bagels, Qdoba and a handful of emerging concepts. It operates beverage concepts through licensing and franchise agreements with Caribou Coffee, Dunkin’, Smoothie King and Starbucks. Airports offer a unique set of operational challenges, said Mickens, such as product delivery through secure terminals, and they come with higher construction and employee costs with onboarding and paying for staff airport parking. But with those challenges comes an array of opportunity. “[Airports] want to create more competition in operations,” Mickens said. “They want the best operators now. And sometimes, we do a better job than the big guys.” Many franchisors have contracts with major airport concessions operators such as Aramark, Compass Group and HMSHost. **Related:** **NFL Veteran Finds Second Franchise Career in Restaurants** ### Focus On the Metrics Backed by private equity firm FS Investors, West Coast Cakery operates 30-plus units split between Dunkin’ and Nothing Bundt Cakes. The group is targeting 50 stores by the end of this year, and Mindel shared a larger goal of operating between 80 and 100 stores by the second quarter of 2027. “People assume that getting into the franchise business is a relatively safe business … but there is a misconception there. People forget they’re still operating their own business at the end of the day,” Mindel said. “For the pleasure of getting to operate your own business, you get to pay a franchisor fee. The franchisor for that fee is going to offer you certain benefits, but it certainly isn’t going to run the company for you.” Mindel pulls from his investment banking background to evaluate a brand’s fit, looking at metrics like portability, longevity and strong cash-on-cash returns. “Then some of the ancillary things: If you love the product, you love the brand, do you want to be part of the system? Do you enjoy the other franchisees in it?” he added. “Those all come into play, but I’m really focusing in on the same metrics I looked at as a banker and the same metrics I know corporate, strategic and private acquirers want to look at. Can those metrics hold up over time, and do I have confidence I can build into those metrics?” ### Buy and Build Last month, Aurify added Tropical Smoothie to its growing restaurant portfolio with a 40-unit development deal for New York and Connecticut. Beyond Tropical Smoothie, Aurify’s portfolio comprises 300-plus stores with brands such as Five Guys, Wingstop, Le Pain Quotidien, Melt Shop and Happy Monkey. It’s also part of the ownership group that bought California Pizza Kitchen in late 2025. Aurify is all in on franchise brands to expand, and is doing so through an aggressive combination of acquisitions and new builds. “There’s always an operator that has been in it long enough and is looking for an exit, or someone that's not maintaining standards, whatever it is. We like to step into that,” Rigos said. “When we buy a brand, it really gives us a lot of institutional knowledge, and hopefully there are good leaders and team members in the department because that gives you a lot more momentum. Then we complement that with building very aggressively. “The beauty of the Tropical Smoothie deal,” he continued, “is it’s a great brand that is about to start really taking off. But it's a highly fragmented franchisee base … and a lot of [franchisees] have been in the system for a long time. We’d much rather be acquiring smaller franchisees, smaller portfolios. You can acquire them at a more attractive multiple; then as you scale, you get the benefit of multiple arbitrages from a value creation standpoint.” *The Restaurant Finance & Development Conference, put on by Franchise Times’ sibling publication Restaurant Finance Monitor, runs November 9-11 at the Wynn hotel in Las Vegas.* ## Entities - General (sector) - article (topic) --- Originally reported by Franchise Times (https://www.franchisetimes.com/franchise_news/emerging-brands-nontraditional-growth-and-practical-scaling-top-operators-reveal-strategies-for-sustainable-expansion/article_9153e792-1d3f-40c9-83ed-b2e1f67c47cb.html). Summarized by Burnaze (https://burnaze.com/article/c9f94478-df02-462c-87b9-523cc82759f4).