The Strategic Play
Craveworthy Brands, the multi-brand restaurant platform with more than 300 locations across 20-plus concepts, has deployed its Wing It On! wing brand inside all 20 Fresh Brothers Pizza locations in Southern California — adding 20 units to Wing It On!'s footprint in a single operational move and delivering the Connecticut-founded concept its first presence on the West Coast.
The co-brand, effective August 24, enables guests to order Wing It On!'s bone-in wings and boneless bites alongside Fresh Brothers' existing menu of pizzas, salads, pastas and Crustwiches. Wing It On! brings five sauces, two dry rubs and house-made dips to the combined menu. Service channels span dine-in, takeout, delivery, catering and online ordering across Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego.
The Growth Model
The mechanics of the expansion illustrate a capital-light growth strategy increasingly common among multi-brand restaurant operators: rather than funding new leases, buildouts and staffing for standalone Wing It On! units, Craveworthy absorbs the brand into an existing, profitable footprint. The approach compresses the timeline and cost of market entry while adding a revenue layer to Fresh Brothers' existing customer base — a dynamic that has drawn growing attention from multi-unit franchise operators pursuing portfolio density.
"The brand already has an incredibly loyal fan base across Southern California and Wing It On! has proven it can compete with the best in the country," said Gregg Majewski, CEO and founder of Craveworthy. "Now, in one launch, we're bringing the two together under one roof and significantly expanding Wing It On!'s reach." Josh Halpern, chief business officer at Craveworthy, framed the move as a repeatable template: "Being able to accelerate growth by leveraging the strength of our existing portfolio is exactly the kind of opportunity we can create when the right brands come together."
Wing It On!, founded in 2011, had previously built a presence from its Connecticut base into markets including Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago. The Southern California launch represents its broadest single-market expansion to date and its first entry into the competitive Los Angeles foodservice corridor, where delivery-forward and fast-casual chicken concepts have intensified competition for wing-category share.
Competitive Timing
The rollout lands days before Wing It On! competes at the National Buffalo Wing Festival in Buffalo, New York on August 29 and 30 — an event where the brand has collected nine awards across four consecutive festivals. Its 2025 haul included first-place finishes in the Medium Traditional and Savory categories. That competition record serves a dual commercial function: it validates the product for Southern California consumers unfamiliar with the brand and provides earned-media support around the launch window.
Matt Ensero, co-founder of Wing It On!, pointed to the brand's competitive discipline as the rationale for the pairing. "We compete against the best wings in the country and win, so for us, wings are never an afterthought," he said. "Bringing Wing It On! and Fresh Brothers together means best-in-class wings meets great pizza — a complete meal meant to be shared between families, sports enthusiasts and friends."
The timing also aligns with the start of football season, a period when wing category demand reliably spikes across both on-premise and delivery channels. Fresh Brothers, founded in Los Angeles in 2008, operates across three of the region's highest-density consumer markets and brings nearly two decades of Southern California brand equity to the co-brand's launch.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
