Operations
Beyond the food court: Auntie Anne's doubles down on non-traditional growth
Auntie Anne's is expanding its presence beyond mall settings into high-traffic locations like airports, train stations and stadiums, optimizing for convenience and leveraging data to meet customers wherever they are.
July 18, 2025 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Editor, Networld Media Group
Auntie Anne's, the beloved pretzel purveyor often found wafting buttery aromas through mall food courts, is twisting its way into unexpected new locations.
Beyond the traditional shopping centers, the company is quietly expanding its footprint with non-traditional units, popping up in airports, train stations, universities and even stadiums, bringing their signature pretzels to grab-and-go customers in a whole new array of settings.
Auntie Anne's has just over 2,000 units, with 1,200 of those in non-traditional settings. The brand inked 13 new agreements in 2025 alone.
"Auntie Anne's is really doubling down on non-traditional development and accelerating expansion in non-traditional venues like airports, stadiums, amusement parks, travel centers (and) universities," Bobby Morena, chief development officer for parent company GoTo Foods, said in a phone interview with QSRweb.com. "These are not one-off plays. They are an integral part of our growth strategy, and that's to meet guests where they are and unlock new potential for the brand."
Smart site selection is important, and Auntie Anne's uses real time traffic, travel and consumer data to pinpoint what locations will give the best ROI so it's not guesswork, according to Morena.
"Everything about Auntie Anne's is really optimized for convenience, from the footprint of a store to the prep time involved," Morena said. "It's built for speed, it's built for simplicity, it's built for mobile-minded guests, which is why we're excelling in transient venues such as these transportation hubs."
Those include locations such as train stations and airports like the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, which has five Auntie Anne's and two more under development. When those are completed, there will be an Auntie Anne's store in every terminal in DFW.
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Photo: Auntie Anne's |
Built for success
The brand has a non-traditional development team consisting of franchise sales and real estate specialists. That team has years of experience working with concessions in airport and travel center hubs.
"There's a little bit of arts and science to that," Morena said. "You wouldn't want to go just anywhere inside of a terminal. We try to be where the traffic is highest, where visibility is the best for our brand (and) where we can capture the most amount of traffic at the right times in that particular venue."
Morena said that at the end of the day, performance in non-traditional venues comes down to having the right franchisees. GoTo Foods invests in resources and support to set up experienced franchisees for sustained success.
The footprint of Auntie Anne's locations is built for non-traditional venue success with their smaller square footage and ease of operations.
"We have under our GoTo Foods platform some shared services such as design and construction that are continually looking at build-out costs. Where can we get better? Where can we negotiate better prices on behalf of our franchisees for design and construction inputs? Where can we get modular? All of that hopefully resulting in lower costs for franchisees and to make it simpler for them," Morena said, "and to allow them to open faster and move faster in venue types like this because speed to market is really critical, and you want to capture as many sales as possible."
The brand is undergoing a store refresh designed to attract younger customers. It features a sleek, modular layout, dynamic signage and thoughtful brand details designed to cut through the visual clutter of today's retail environment, according to a press release on the redesign.
"This modernized design is a reflection of how we're evolving to meet our guests wherever they are, while offering franchisees the flexibility, scalability and operational efficiency they need to be successful," Michael Freeman, president of brands for GoTo Foods, said in a press release. "Our bold new look, featuring vibrant blues, playful twists and a sleek logo, signifies a major evolution in our visual identity, ensuring we remain culturally relevant and enticing to our target Gen Z and millennial demographics. As consumers are engaging with Auntie Anne's in more ways than ever before, we're building a brand experience that's adaptable, future-ready and deeply connected to how people snack and dine today."
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Operations
Morena said airport locations are generally easy to operate, but the brand has built tailored playbooks for operators to follow to help streamline logistics in terms of managing labor and efficiency in high-pressure environments.
Operations don't change much from a mall location to a non-traditional venue. The brand itself is innovating with new menu items, but the menu in non-traditional locations can be slightly slimmed down for effectiveness.
"We are streamlining and optimizing to focus on the high throughput," Morena said. "Auntie Anne's has been extremely adaptable for years, so there's not much that needs to be changed per se about the brand to allow it to thrive and operate in venues like airports or universities or arenas or ballparks. It's adaptive by nature because it's so simple to operate."
Auntie Anne's is known for its fragrant pretzels which can often be smelled before seeing a location. That kind of aroma-forward business is profitable in high-volume traffic areas.
Morena said keeping up with demand has been the biggest challenge for Auntie Anne's. Grabbing market share before the competition is a strategic move, one in which Auntie Anne's is excelling.
"Auntie Anne's is a very well-known brand, and we want to bring it to as many of these types of venues as we can," Morena said.
Into the future
Today, the brand is exploring military bases and universities as well — any type of venue with transient traffic. It will also remodel more than 150 units to the new design.
"We're evolving brands like Auntie Anne's beyond their traditional mall roots where people really know Auntie Anne's well into streetside development into co-branding locations with other brands under our portfolio," Morena said, such as Cinnabon.
"Streetside is the number one way for us to move beyond the mall-based footprint that most Auntie Anne's customers have gotten to know Auntie Anne's in."
About Mandy Wolf Detwiler
Mandy Wolf Detwiler is the managing editor at Networld Media Group and the site editor for PizzaMarketplace.com and QSRweb.com. She has more than 20 years’ experience covering food, people and places.
An award-winning print journalist, Mandy brings more than 20 years’ experience to Networld Media Group. She has spent nearly two decades covering the pizza industry, from independent pizzerias to multi-unit chains and every size business in between. Mandy has been featured on the Food Network and has won numerous awards for her coverage of the restaurant industry. She has an insatiable appetite for learning, and can tell you where to find the best slices in the country after spending 15 years traveling and eating pizza for a living.
