GoTo Foods

Episode 5️⃣ 0️⃣ ! David Mikita, President of International and Retail Channels at GoTo Foods, joins me on the podcast to discuss how GoTo Foods has grown to become the world’s #2 food & beverage licensor and what the company has in store for the future. We explore: 🍽 Beyond buying power, what are the benefits for franchise partners? Dave discusses how GoTo Foods provides support on consumer insights, site selection, supply chain, new product development, menu innovation and more. 🌏 How the GoTo Foods franchise model differentiates overseas. 🥤 Bricks and mortar reinvention – how GoTo Foods is repurposing its QSR and fast-casual places.  🍦 The symbiotic relationship between bricks & mortar locations and licensed retail products on grocery shelves. 🥨 How to drive global growth while remaining locally relevant (from offering rolls with less sugar in Cinnabon Japan to cream cheese-filled pretzel sticks at Auntie Anne’s in Hong Kong!) Listen to the full episode on retaildisrupted.com or wherever you get your podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eQFeGEHa   #franchising #licensing #gotofoods #retailinsights #RetailDisrupted #retailpodcast #auntieannes #cinnabon #carvel #moes #schlutzskys #mcalisters #jamba #QSR #foodservice #fastcasual #consumer #airportretail #grocery #cpg #fmcg #internationalretail #internationalbusiness #retail

Why did Focus change its name to GoTo Foods? "We’ve figured out how to unleash the power of a portfolio, so that one plus one equals four,” CEO Jim Holthouser shared at this year's QSR Evolution Conference.

In a consumer-driven marketplace, data is the true king … which is why GoTo Foods recently took the leap to adopt a unified commerce platform. While I doubt anyone would say this is my sexiest LinkedIn post, I do think the topic is a worthy one. Please hang in there and keep reading while I geek out just a bit.   Earlier this year, we made the decision to begin the transition of all seven of our brands from three legacy point of sale (POS) systems over to Qu POS. At the end of the integration, this unified commerce platform will centralize ALL of our sales channels, loyalty programs, data and back-end systems in with the Qu POS system.   If you think that sounds like a massive undertaking, you’re right—but wow, the payoffs so far have been worth it.   Due to the brains, brawn and laser-focused commitment of the Qu and GoTo Foods teams, just this week, we hit the 1,000th installation in our restaurants. When you do the math, that breaks down to a lightning-fast rollout rate of 75–100 stores per week. To say we’re facilitating a better guest and operator experience would be putting it mildly.   Qu’s platform goes beyond the traditional POS offerings, seamlessly integrating kitchen display, customer data, dashboard reporting, POS and individual brand loyalty programs into one centralized platform. In a word? It’s awesome.   Guests love Qu because they can earn and redeem loyalty rewards at any GoTo Foods location. Gone are the days of dual- and multi-brand sites having to choose just one loyalty program to align with their POS system!   Operators love it because Qu helps tremendously with order accuracy, significantly reduces training time, offers a holistic snapshot of all transaction data through Notify (a rather addictive real-time data app), and automatically updates to the latest, greatest software enhancements every two weeks.   I personally love it for many reasons. For starters, Qu is positioning GoTo Foods to deliver a better, more engaging guest experience and empowering our organization with better data fidelity. This change frees up our brand franchisees to focus on service and strategy, rather than troubleshooting a complex POS system. Plus, our corporate team now has incredible top-line visibility into sales at any time of the day across the entire GoTo Foods portfolio.   Mostly, though, I love Qu because our franchisees are lining up for it (which means it makes their jobs easier), and our guests are getting a more cohesive, customized and consistent experience each time they frequent any of our seven amazing brands. And if that’s not feeding people and potential, I don’t know what is.   #GoToFoods  #Qu  #UnifiedCommercePlatform  #FeedingPeopleAndPotential  #NoLimits 

Ben Coley and I asked GoTo Foods CEO Jim Holthouser at QSR Evolution about the story behind the name change (from FOCUS). This was a fun answer. My daughter is 5 and she's already picking up phrases in kindergarten I don't understand. So I get it. Comes at you fast. But the general theme here, as it relates to guests, was GTF decided to "anchor the company around how the customer thought about us."