Knuckies Hoagies

Deciding whether to invest $107,000 to $406,000 in a regional hoagie concept requires more than a cursory review of a franchise brochure — it demands granular data on unit economics, growth velocity, brand durability, and competitive positioning within one of the most crowded segments in food service. Knuckies Hoagies is a fast-casual hoagie and sandwich concept headquartered in Milton, Georgia, founded in 2019 by Todd Broaderick, who continues to serve as CEO and steers leadership development alongside high-level operations for the brand. Operating under the legal entity "Knuckies Franchise Company LLC," the brand has grown to five franchised units, with zero company-owned locations, meaning every operating store is a franchisee-run business — a structure that concentrates both risk and reward at the franchisee level from day one. Despite its modest current footprint, Knuckies Hoagies has attracted measurable industry attention, earning a spot on the prestigious 2023 QSR 40/40 list, which recognizes the 40 hottest emerging brands operating fewer than 40 locations in the limited-service restaurant sector. The brand's singular differentiators include a proprietary bread program developed in partnership with Engelman's Bakery, a Walmart real estate strategy that secured 14 executed leases across six states, and a nimble small-footprint operating model sized between 800 and 2,200 square feet — a combination that positions Knuckies Hoagies as a capital-efficient challenger in the broader $315.1 billion U.S. limited-service restaurant market. This analysis is produced independently by PeerSense franchise research analysts and is not sponsored by, affiliated with, or reviewed by Knuckies Franchise Company LLC or any of its principals.

The limited-service restaurant industry is experiencing sustained, structural growth driven by consumer behavior shifts that favor speed, portability, and value — all attributes that benefit sandwich and hoagie-focused concepts. The global limited-service restaurant market was valued at $1.2 trillion in 2024 and is projected to reach $1.4 trillion by 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate of 3.2% over that period, with some analyst projections estimating a more aggressive 5.71% CAGR through 2035 that would expand the global market to $1.214 trillion by 2032. The U.S. market alone was valued at $315.1 billion in 2024, making it the single largest national market for limited-service food concepts worldwide. Delivery and takeout continue to be the sector's fastest-growing service channels, with delivery sales in limited-service restaurants surging more than 20% in the past year alone — a secular tailwind that benefits compact-footprint brands like Knuckies Hoagies that are not burdened by the overhead of large dining rooms. Fast-casual dining, the sub-segment most closely aligned with Knuckies Hoagies's positioning, is projected to grow at its own 3.2% CAGR over the same analysis window, fueled by consumers who want food that is faster than casual dining but higher-quality than traditional quick service. Consumer demand for customizable menu options, growing digital ordering adoption, and the expansion of drive-thru and mobile-order capabilities are all macro forces compounding demand within this category. The sandwich and hoagie sub-segment specifically benefits from high repeat purchase frequency, relatively low per-unit food costs compared to full-service concepts, and broad demographic appeal — characteristics that make it an enduringly attractive space for franchise investment.

The Knuckies Hoagies franchise investment spans a range from $107,450 at the low end to $406,450 at the high end, creating meaningful flexibility for prospective franchisees with different capital positions and real estate situations. The average turnkey investment, as stated by the company, is approximately $295,000 — positioning this concept in the accessible-to-mid-tier range for limited-service restaurant franchises, well below the $500,000 to $1 million-plus entry points required by many nationally recognized sandwich and sub concepts. The variability in total investment across that $107,450 to $406,450 range is driven primarily by format selection and build-out circumstances: the brand supports traditional inline store builds between 800 and 2,200 square feet, modular container drive-through formats, and non-traditional smaller-footprint spaces situated within Walmart retail locations, each carrying materially different construction, leasehold improvement, and equipment costs. The ongoing royalty rate is 5% of gross sales, and franchisees also contribute 2% of gross sales to the brand marketing fund, bringing total ongoing fees to 7% of gross revenue — a combined rate that is consistent with fast-casual industry norms, where royalty structures typically range from 4% to 8% and advertising contributions typically run 1% to 3%. The Walmart co-tenancy model is particularly notable from an investment-cost standpoint: positioning a restaurant inside an existing high-traffic retailer can meaningfully reduce traditional build-out costs associated with standalone locations, while also eliminating the independent lease negotiation process for operators who lack commercial real estate experience. Knuckies Hoagies has executed 14 Walmart leases across six states — Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas — demonstrating that this is not a pilot arrangement but an institutionalized real estate channel. For investors evaluating financing options, the $107,450 to $295,000 range for lower-format builds aligns with investment thresholds commonly eligible for SBA-backed small business lending, which can significantly reduce the out-of-pocket equity requirement at entry.

Knuckies Hoagies operates as a lean, small-team concept by design — each location is built to function with a team of 2 to 6 employees, which creates a labor model that is structurally simpler than full-service concepts and far less vulnerable to the labor availability pressures that have plagued larger-staff restaurant formats since 2020. The brand's operating formats range across inline traditional stores, Walmart embedded units, and modular container drive-throughs, giving franchisees meaningful optionality in how they enter a market based on available real estate, capital, and local consumer patterns. CEO Todd Broaderick has publicly emphasized "proven reproducible processes for ease of operating" as a core franchisee value proposition, suggesting the system is engineered for operator simplicity rather than culinary complexity — a meaningful differentiator for first-time restaurant franchisees. The brand's supply chain is anchored by formal partnerships with Sysco, one of the largest foodservice distribution companies in North America, Engelman's Bakery for the proprietary bread program that forms the brand's culinary identity, and Pepsi for beverage supply — a three-party institutional supply chain that provides franchisees with negotiated pricing leverage they could not replicate independently. Knuckies Hoagies currently has franchise opportunities concentrated in the Southeastern United States, with active development in six states: Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas. While the brand has not publicly detailed the full length of its initial training program or the exact cadence of ongoing field consultant visits, the company's leadership structure — with Broaderick personally overseeing operations and leadership development — suggests a hands-on founder-led support model more common to emerging franchise systems than to mature ones. Prospective franchisees evaluating territory exclusivity, multi-unit expectations, and absentee ownership parameters should request and carefully review the current Franchise Disclosure Document for complete structural details.

Item 19 financial performance data is not disclosed in the current Franchise Disclosure Document for Knuckies Hoagies. This means the company has not elected to provide average unit revenue, median revenue, top-quartile and bottom-quartile performance data, or profit margin representations — a decision that is legally permissible under FTC franchise disclosure rules, as Item 19 financial performance representations are optional for franchisors, not mandatory. The absence of Item 19 disclosure places a greater analytical burden on prospective investors, who must rely on industry benchmarks, unit count trajectory, and third-party signals rather than franchisor-provided performance data to model expected returns. Within the fast-casual sandwich segment, industry benchmarks suggest that well-positioned QSR and fast-casual units in high-traffic locations can generate annual revenues ranging from $400,000 to over $1 million depending on market density, format, and operator execution — ranges that investors should treat as context, not as representations applicable to Knuckies Hoagies specifically. At a stated average turnkey investment of $295,000 and a combined ongoing fee burden of 7% of gross sales, a franchisee would need to generate substantial volume relative to investment to achieve a payback period competitive with other food franchise categories. The brand's Walmart real estate strategy is analytically relevant here: Walmart stores average over 10,000 customer transactions per day at many U.S. locations, creating a passive traffic volume that can meaningfully support revenue generation for an embedded food concept without requiring independent marketing spend to build walk-in traffic from zero. The PeerSense FPI Score for Knuckies Hoagies is currently 55, which falls in the Moderate range — reflecting the brand's early-stage franchise system maturity, limited unit count, and the absence of disclosed financial performance data, offset by its institutional supply chain partnerships, industry recognition, and aggressive expansion commitments.

Knuckies Hoagies entered 2024 with a handful of operating locations and concluded the period with seven units operating and a freshly executed Walmart partnership that secured 14 leases across six states simultaneously — a growth acceleration that is structurally significant for a brand at this stage. The company's stated target for 2025 is 14 new location openings, which would represent a doubling of the system's unit count in a single calendar year and would constitute net new unit growth that compares favorably with the expansion velocity of many far more established limited-service brands. Geographic expansion targets for 2025 include Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, in addition to continued Georgia development — moving the brand from a single-state operator to a multi-regional presence spanning both the Southeast and Midwest within a 12-month window. The Walmart partnership is widely cited by the company as a "game-changer" — and from a pure franchise development standpoint, the structural logic is sound: Walmart's approximately 4,700 U.S. store locations represent a pre-validated real estate pipeline with built-in foot traffic that eliminates one of the most capital-intensive and time-consuming variables in new restaurant development. Beyond Walmart, the brand's use of modular container drive-through formats allows for rapid site deployment in non-traditional locations — parking lots, mixed-use developments, and event corridors — further expanding the addressable site universe. The proprietary bread program through Engelman's Bakery functions as a product-level competitive moat that is not easily replicated by competing sandwich concepts operating with commodity bread suppliers. Recognition on the 2023 QSR 40/40 list as one of the hottest 40 brands under 40 locations provides third-party validation of the brand's concept-level momentum at a critical stage in its franchise development lifecycle.

The ideal Knuckies Hoagies franchisee profile is shaped by the brand's operational simplicity and founder-led support structure rather than by prior restaurant industry experience as a hard prerequisite. The 2-to-6 employee operating model suggests that owner-operators or semi-absentee owners managing a small team are the intended operators, rather than multi-unit restaurant groups managing large labor forces across complex systems. Given that the brand currently has six states under active development and 14 executed Walmart leases requiring operator placement, prospective investors with existing relationships in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, or Texas are entering the pipeline at a moment of high availability — a contrast to more established franchise systems where desirable markets are already claimed. The Walmart embedded format is particularly well-suited for franchisees who want the structural advantage of a built-in traffic environment rather than the independent site selection and marketing-from-scratch challenge of a standalone location. Multi-unit development arrangements are likely available and encouraged given the brand's aggressive 14-location 2025 expansion target, though investors should confirm specific multi-unit incentives and area development terms directly in the FDD. The timeline from franchise agreement signing to store opening will vary by format — modular container builds and Walmart embedded units likely carry shorter construction and permitting timelines than traditional inline builds — but prospective owners should budget 90 to 180 days as a reasonable general planning window for non-traditional formats. Franchise investors who are geographically positioned in the brand's current development corridor and who are comfortable with an emerging system's risk-reward profile represent the clearest candidate match for this opportunity.

The investment thesis for a Knuckies Hoagies franchise rests on three compounding factors: participation in a $315.1 billion U.S. limited-service restaurant market growing at a sustained 3.2% CAGR or better, a capital-efficient entry investment ranging from $107,450 to $406,450 with a stated average turnkey cost of $295,000, and a Walmart real estate partnership that provides 14 pre-executed leases representing an unusual degree of institutional infrastructure for a brand with fewer than 10 operating locations. The risk factors are equally important to weigh: Item 19 financial performance data is not disclosed, meaning there is no franchisor-provided revenue or margin data to anchor return-on-investment projections; the system is still in early-stage development with five current franchised units, which limits the performance history available for due diligence; and employee-level feedback from operating locations surfaces management consistency concerns that prospective franchisees should probe carefully during their validation process. The brand's 2025 plan to open 14 new locations would be the most aggressive expansion in its six-year history, and executing that trajectory while maintaining operational quality across new geographies and formats is a meaningful execution challenge for any emerging franchise system. PeerSense provides exclusive due diligence data including SBA lending history, FPI score breakdowns, location maps with Google ratings, FDD financial data, and side-by-side comparison tools that allow investors to benchmark the Knuckies Hoagies franchise cost, structure, and performance signals against competing concepts in the limited-service restaurant category. The PeerSense FPI Score of 55 reflects a Moderate rating that appropriately captures both the brand's legitimate momentum and the analytical uncertainties inherent in evaluating an early-stage franchise system without disclosed unit-level financial performance. Explore the complete Knuckies Hoagies franchise profile on PeerSense to access the full suite of independent franchise intelligence data.