Goodcents Franchise Model

Goodcents is launching an enticing limited-time offer with a new value menu designed to provide fans with satisfying meal options at great prices. Starting July 31, customers can choose from two appealing meal deals:

The first option is a $4.99 combo, which includes a 4-inch signature or classic sub paired with a bag of chips and a refreshing fountain drink. The second option is a $5.99 value meal with the choice of one of four delicious pasta dishes: pasta and meatballs, chicken Alfredo, chicken parmesan, or buffalo chicken pasta. Each meal comes with a drink, making it a hearty and flavorful choice for pasta lovers.

“Goodcents has always been known for selling great food at a great price,” said Joe Bisogno, founder and CEO of Goodcents. “Our customers expect quality and value from Goodcents, and we are committed to delivering both every day.”

Goodcents has named Jennifer Dunn, the owner of a Goodcents restaurant in Wichita, the Franchisee of the Year.

“Jennifer has worked really hard in Wichita, and we are thrilled to celebrate her success,” said Joe Bisogno, founder and CEO of Goodcents. “We look forward to many more years of partnership with Jennifer.”

A former director of operations at a barbecue restaurant, Dunn purchased the restaurant from a friend in 2022. “I loved eating here, and I loved the product,” she said. “And I knew that if I were going to buy a business from someone, I wanted it to be someone who was just as particular about details as I am, because I wanted to walk into a business that was run the right way.”

She works in the restaurant six days per week and loves every minute of it, Dunn said. She was supposed to take six weeks off after having surgery last year, but she couldn’t stand it. So after two weeks, Dunn brought in a stool and propped herself up by the register.

“The people I’ve met have been amazing,” Dunn said. “My employees – who stayed with me after I bought the store – are great. It’s been everything I expected and then some.”

Dunn has two grown children and a new grandson who’s already a regular visitor to her Goodcents location.

Goodcents, which has deep roots in the Midwest, currently has 65 open locations with dozens more in development and expansion into new markets planned.

May 08, 2024 // Franchising.com // DE SOTO, Kan. – Goodcents will open its second Omaha-area location on Thursday, May 9, at 9810 Giles Road in LaVista, Nebraska. The expansion is part of a multi-unit deal with current franchisees to expand in the Omaha area.

The grand opening celebration will begin at 11 a.m., and to kick it off, the first person in line will receive free subs for a year through their rewards account. The next 10 people in line will receive a Goodcents swag bag to include a branded tote bag, T-shirt and other items. There will also be special giveaways for the first 100 people and raffles throughout the day for customers who join the rewards program.

“We are excited to bring Goodcents to La Vista and to see our vision for expansion come true,” said Will Gregalunas, the Goodcents area representative who owns the new location with his wife, Gina. “We’ve grown a lot since we first joined Goodcents nearly 10 years ago, and we love our loyal customers.”

The Gregalunases, who operate the Goodcents in the Village Pointe area of Omaha, signed an agreement last year to build the new restaurants over the next four to five years in the western metro area of Omaha.

“We are so happy for Gina and Will and look forward to supporting them as they expand throughout Omaha,” said Goodcents Founder and CEO Joe Bisogno. “Their success is a result of their hard work and dedication to Goodcents.”

The regional sandwich chain signed an area representative agreement that calls for the new stores to be built within the next five years. It recently did two other similar deals with other franchisees in Nebraska and Pennsylvania.

Restaurant labor shortages have become a pervasive issue, affecting both corporate and store-level operations.

At the corporate level, executives face challenges in recruiting and retaining top talent for key roles in marketing, supply chain management and finance, among others. This shortage disrupts strategic planning and hinders growth initiatives.

At the store level, restaurants struggle to find and keep skilled kitchen staff, servers and hosts. This leads to reduced operational efficiency, longer wait times and compromised customer experiences.

Factors contributing to these shortages include pandemic-related workforce disruptions, increased competition for talent, and changing employee preferences for better work-life balance. These challenges demand innovative solutions to ensure the industry’s sustained success.

During a breakout session titled “Growing with a Leaner Team” at the Fast Casual Executive Summit in Louisville, Kentucky, held Oct. 8-10, 2023, a panel discusse how recruitment and retention — with a boost from technology — doesn’t have to be a brand’s most pressing problem. The summit was sponsored by platinum sponsors Botrista, SUPERORDER, Evocalize, Upside, Lunchbox and Workstream.

The panel session, sponsored by Lineup.ai, featured panelists David Bloom, chief development and operating officer for Capriotti’s and Wing Zone, Bill DiPaola, president/CEO and co-owner of Swamp Dawg and Jami Bond, VP of franchise development at Goodcents. Sam Gerace, CEO at Lineup.ai, moderated the event.

“Having a strategic management platform helps you run your business, set your goals if you have a 10-year plan, three-year goals, one-year plan or quarterly progs,” Bloom said. “Having that disciplined structure to make sure that what you’re actually doing is in line with where you want to go — most importantly annually and longer term – is critical.”

Bloom said building a high-performance team is step one for the Entrepreneurial Operating System, which is used by 10,000 companies around the world, including his brands. He added it takes a year to get an EOS in place and two years to get good at it. The EOS is not inexpensive and takes a lot to implement.

“Make sure you have a disciplined approach about building your strategy and executing against it and then building high-performance teams that can help you grow,” Bloom said. “Lastly, for brands that have aspirations of being national or multi-national — I’ve worked in 33 countries to date — you’ve got to invest ahead of growth.”

DiPaola said there are ways to invest in that type of thinking for less money. “It does absolutely work if you are committed and you spent that time — I literally will push anything and everything out of the way in order to get my teams together to commit to the times that we all agreed to to attend to the business,” he said, adding, “because if we don’t and we’re not really, really harsh about that line then we’re always working in the business in some way, shape or form and we never find the time.”

DiPaola likened it to having children. There’s never a right time to have children, just as there is never a right time to work on the business.

At Goodcents, said Bond, everyone gets to be hands-on. The founder of the company is still involved in the process, which she says has been “incredible” for the brand.

“Just being able to come together as a team and getting the right people in the right places is something we’ve really worked on the last three years,” Bond added, “and getting the right seats at the table so we can get our franchisees reengaging for support. We lost track of that for a while, quite frankly, and we’ve reengaged with a brand ambassador board and just getting those franchisees who are in the restaurants every day back in giving us their opinions on what’s working (and) what’s not has just be instrumental.”

Swamp Dawg has several full-service concepts as well as some fast-casual brands. Gerace asked DiPaola how he keeps the teams lean while operating such diverse concepts.

“People are singularly the most important piece to anything I’ve ever been able to be successful with,” DiPaola said. “That is why when I realized how little my vision would allow me to see the right things and people to learn what their talents actually were, that’s really where my issue was.”

Swamp Dawg has some “significant personnel challenges,” he said, adding he’s actually been on the line cooking side by side with kitchen employees.

If the guests only transact with employees, they can do that anywhere, including the competition. There’s a “why” involved with their transaction with your restaurant, and the external guests — the customers — transact with the internal guests — the employees. Cooking alongside employees from time to time lets employees know you understand the challenges they face every day.

“That’s how I’ve been able to keep people and been able to learn about their strengths and weaknesses and promote the right people,” DiPaola said.

Bloom said “the right people” always want to be challenged, want to grow and learn, and they’re looking for opportunity. “If that’s who you are as a company, whether a technology company or a restaurant company or an operator, it doesn’t really matter,” he said. “If that’s who you are, then you’re going to attract that kind of talent.”

Goodcents is about to expand into state No. 10, and when asked what advice to give someone moving into new markets, Bond said spending time with franchisees can be critical. “There’s nothing that can take away from literally walking in that trade area (or) driving in that trade area,” she said. “We actually go with our founder. He did a great job growing the brand.”

Seven of the brand’s first original stores are still in business today. Spending that time, shoulder to shoulder with franchisees, helps the team understand why they love a location and what they love about their new potential customers.

“Counting cars, all of the things (the founder) did in the old days when he started 30 years ago, are still important today,” Bond said. “Yes, technology can do it for us as well, but there’s nothing that takes away from being in-market, and the franchisee feels incredibly important and special when the founder takes a day out of their schedule to go spend hours with them in a car.”

The Fast Casual Executive Summit is owned by Networld Media Group, publishers of Fastcasual.com, QSRweb and Pizza Marketplace. The company’s next event is the Self-Service Innovation Summit Dec. 4-6 in Miami, Florida.

Kansas-based Goodcents will grow its presence in Omaha next year thanks to a 10-unit deal signed by franchisees Will and Gina Gregalunas, who operate a Goodcents in the Village Pointe area of Omaha.

The couple signed an area representative agreement to build nine restaurants over the next four to five years in the western metro area of Omaha with the first planned to open by March. They saved proceeds from their first location to invest in growing their business through the area representative program.

“We are so excited for Will and Gina, and we are thrilled they’ve decided to grow their business with Goodcents,” Jami Bond, Goodcents vice president of franchise development,said in a company press release. “We can’t wait to help them bring Goodcents to more of their neighbors in Omaha.”

At Goodcents, area representatives invest in a geographic area and are responsible for developing 10 stores within the area. In return, the representative receives a portion of the franchise fees and royalties from the locations, Bond said.

Natives of the Omaha area, the Gregalunases have been married 13 years and have two children and four grandchildren. Will Gregalunas works in information technology while Gina Gregalunas operates their restaurant business full time.

“We enjoy owning an independent business and controlling our own destiny,” Will Gregalunas said in the release. “We get a lot of energy from and interest in our restaurant. Our business has grown a lot since we started our Goodcents in 2015, and we look forward to serving new customers in our new locations soon.”

Goodcents has over 60 locations with dozens more in development

Goodcents has partnered with Punchh to launch an app and refreshed rewards program that will provide more accurate data to help the Kansas City-area sandwich shop personalize marketing. Franchisees also will be able to use the reward program data to market directly to their customers within six months.

“The new program data will help us take some of the guesswork out of marketing, like sending kids meal coupons to customers who may or may not have kids,” Rebecca Murray, vice president of marketing at Goodcents, said in a company press release. “Our franchise owners know our guests’ faces when they come in the front door; we should also know their preferences so that we can engage more fully with them.”

According to a study from research firm BIA/Kelsey, a repeat customer spends up to 67% more than a new customer, which is why guest loyalty has become such a focus of restaurants in recent years.

Rewards programs are considered strong drivers of restaurant app usage, in part because they generate reliable first-party data. Since Google announced plans to drop cookies in late 2024, brands are looking for new ways to build a customer-first strategy. Better customer experiences — such as receiving coupons for a customer’s favorite sandwich at a favorite lunch spot near their offices — build loyalty and engagement.

Lindsay and Jake Campbell have talked about owning their own business for years, but the timing was just never quite right. Then the COVID-19 pandemic came along, and while Jake was furloughed for a couple of weeks, the couple gave some more thought to owning a restaurant again.

“There’s a little bit of the American Dream there, the idea of controlling your own destiny,” Lindsay says. “Of course, you can never control everything, but … This just seemed like the right time.”

This month, the Campbells’ dream came true when they closed on an existing Goodcents restaurant in Leavenworth, Kansas. “We are going to start with this one location, and hopefully, just keep going and going as we expand our business,” Jake says. 

The couple’s entrepreneurial dreams were inspired by Jake’s dad, who has owned an insurance agency in a small town for 25 years. And so in 2020, while they were working from home together, they began to seriously research the opportunities available in the restaurant franchise industry.

The Campbells were attracted to franchising because neither of them has a background in the restaurant industry. Lindsay’s background is in data analytics, and Jake’s is in financial planning. 

They looked at several fast casual restaurant brands, but none were just the right fit. Then Jake came across a Goodcents location for sale, and he got excited. A longtime Penny Club fan, he confesses to eating “at least three times a week” at a Goodcents two blocks away from his first job after college. 

Awesome sandwiches aside, the more the Campbells learned about Goodcents as a business opportunity, the more they were convinced that it was the brand for them.

“One of the things I loved about Goodcents is how much they care about quality in their ingredients, and they stand behind that,” Lindsay says. “They care about training. They care about values. They care about integrity.” 

Jake appreciated how thorough Goodcents’ training program was. “The training is a six-week program, and it is awesome,” he says. “Even the support they’ve given us through the process of buying the restaurant has been amazing. They make sure everybody is there for you and that you aren’t just walking in and trying to learn everything at once. It’s been great.” 

The couple acknowledge that buying a restaurant during a pandemic came with a few challenges. “We pursued a few other opportunities, but they fell through. I really believe things happen for a reason, and I feel this is exactly where we’re supposed to be,” Lindsay says. “We love that Goodcents is a hometown brand that stands for good things, that they care and they give back to the community. We are so excited to build our own successful business with Goodcents.”

Goodcents has named its newest Area Representative for the Kansas City metro area. Moussa Sobaiti plans to open 10 restaurants in the Kansas City area over the next few years, with four planned for 2021, including one in the new Travel America Center in Edgerton.

The Edgerton location and one planned for Lenexa, Kansas, where Goodcents was founded, will open in the spring. Two other Goodcents restaurants, in Parkville, Missouri, and Prescott, Kansas, are scheduled to open later in the year.

Sobaiti said he anticipated that associating with a franchised restaurant would open doors to future development opportunities. He chose Goodcents because the food is fresh and the brand is strong. “I love that I can order a turkey sandwich and they slice the deli meat and cheese right in front of me,” he said. “Also, it’s a strong national brand with a loyal local following.”

Goodcents Area Representatives invest $100,000 in a defined geographic area that will be developed with 10 stores, at least one of which must be owned and operated by the Area Representative. The Area Representative receives half of the $30,000 franchise fee for each restaurant in his or her area. The Area Representative also will be paid one-third of the franchise royalty, or 2% of total sales, from each location.

Farrellynn Wolf, CEO of Goodcents, said the company is excited to welcome Sobaiti to the team. “Moussa is committed to helping us grow the brand in Kansas City, and we are excited to see him share Goodcents’ quality food and exceptional customer service with even more people in the community.”

Sobaiti also owns several convenience stores and a travel center. He previously was the director of engineering for a Silicon Valley firm. He and his wife live in Overland Park.