In this episode, host Jaime Oikle interviews Brianna Keefe, founder and CEO of Toastique, a fast casual wellness cafe with over 65 locations across 25 states. Brianna shares how her background as a college athlete inspired the concept, how she bootstrapped the first location in Washington D.C., and how organic customer demand led to franchising. The conversation covers franchise partner selection, store sizing, in-house food preparation, transparency, customer experience, loyalty programs, and community-driven marketing. Brianna also discusses future growth plans, aiming to reach 100 units, while maintaining quality and brand integrity. For more visit https://toastique.com/

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From One Store to 65+: How Toastique's Brianna Keefe Built a Franchise Brand Without Outside Capital

When Brianna Keefe opened the first Toastique in Washington, D.C.'s Wharf district in 2018, she wasn't building a franchise. She was building herself a job.

Eight years and more than 65 locations across 25-plus states later, that job has turned into one of the fastest-growing fast casual wellness brands in the country, and Keefe says the company still hasn't raised a dollar of outside capital.

Keefe joined the Running Restaurants.com podcast to talk about bootstrapping her way from a single 1,000-square-foot shop to a national franchise system, and the lessons in that conversation apply well beyond the toast and smoothie category. Here's what independent operators can take from her story.

It Started With a Personal Need, Not a Business Plan

Keefe was a full-time college cheerleader juggling practices, games, mandatory lifting, and classes, and she leaned on toast, smoothies, and bowls to fuel a nonstop schedule. After graduating, she noticed a gap in the market: fast, healthy food that was actually transparent about what was in it.

"Some of the bigger juice bar brands are not, you know, labeled healthy, but they're adding sugars and syrups and artificial colors into it," Keefe said. She saw the demand in D.C. and opened her first shop to fill it, expecting nothing more than a job she'd love.

The lesson for independent operators: the strongest concepts often come from solving a problem the founder has personally lived, not from chasing a trend.

The Money Came From Credit Cards, Friends, and Family

There was no outside investor writing a check. Keefe and her three partners self-funded the first store with a small loan from friends and family and, by her own admission, debt on three credit cards, against her father's advice.

Each partner brought a different skill to the table: one had a construction background and physically built the first store, one brought kitchen experience, and Keefe brought front-of-house and hospitality know-how. That division of expertise, paired with a habit of reporting to each other and leaning on whoever was the expert on a given issue, became a foundation the company still leans on.

Foot Traffic, Not Marketing, Validated the Concept

Toastique's first location opened in D.C.'s newly developed Wharf waterfront district in 2018, a high-traffic destination that drew visitors from all over. Keefe says the brand spent no money on marketing in those early days. Instead, she was in the store every day, talking to every customer, explaining that the food was made from scratch without kitchen hoods or heavy equipment.

Customers told her to franchise, she said, "no less than like 20 times in the first month."

A Deliberate Brake on Growth

Once Keefe and her partners decided to franchise, they built in a rule that runs counter to how a lot of growth-hungry brands operate: a restriction on how quickly a franchisee can go from their first store to their second.

"We want to protect the brand, the level of detail, the quality, the personal touch that we want every store to have," Keefe said. The company also commits to opening a new corporate store every year, both to stay close to the day-to-day realities franchisees face and to create a growth path for team members. Keefe notes that all of Toastique's current managers started as team members, with some employees now in their fifth and seventh years.

What Toastique Looks For in a Franchise Partner

Toastique started with a franchise sales organization to source and vet candidates before eventually bringing that process in-house. Over time, Keefe says the team has learned to prioritize a specific set of traits over capital or resume:

• Genuine belief in the brand. Franchisees who aren't passionate about the concept tend to lose interest or move on.
• Business acumen and daily discipline. Showing up, doing the books, and running the operation well even on hard days.
• A desire to grow within their community, not just open units and move on.

"A brand is only as successful as the partners and operators that are running it," Keefe said.

Small Footprint, Big Intimacy

Toastique's sweet spot runs 1,200 to 1,500 square feet, smaller than many competitors. Keefe says the brand has never seen a correlation between bigger stores and higher sales, especially with roughly 40 percent of orders now coming through online, takeout, and third-party channels. A smaller footprint keeps stores feeling intimate and, even when they're busy, never overwhelming.

Location selection is driven less by age demographics and more by average household income and whether a neighborhood can support Toastique as a routine, not an occasional treat. "It's like, we want to be in an area where people can make it part of their daily routine," Keefe said, noting the brand still draws customers as young as toddlers and as old as 80.

Selling the Food Story Before the First Bite

Nearly everything on the menu, from the bread to the granola to the nut butters, is made in-house or through a dedicated bakery partner without preservatives or artificial ingredients. But Keefe says the product alone isn't what sells it. It's the story behind it, delivered by employees who talk customers through the menu before they order.

Toastique's open-kitchen layout reinforces that story visually: customers watch their toast, smoothie, or coffee made to order after hearing about it from staff. It's a simple, replicable idea for any independent operator: train your team to explain what makes the food different, then let customers see it happen.

A Loyalty Program Built for Frequent, Fast Rewards

Toastique runs its loyalty program through its POS integration, offering roughly 10 percent back (10 dollars for every 100 dollars spent) along with birthday rewards and local promotions. The system also flags lapsed customers, people who normally order weekly but haven't been in for 30 days, so the brand can send a small incentive to bring them back.

Keefe's read on loyalty programs mirrors something most operators intuitively know but don't always act on: customers are more likely to choose a brand where the reward feels reachable, not one that requires a huge spend before it pays off.

Learning From Sweetgreen: Community Over Store Count

Keefe pointed to Sweetgreen, another D.C.-born concept about a decade ahead of Toastique, as an influence, not for the menu but for how the brand built loyalty through transparency and genuine community engagement rather than just opening more units.

That philosophy shows up in Toastique's own grassroots marketing: community events, partnerships with local businesses, and run clubs hosted out of nearly every location. "It's not just opening stores and selling food," Keefe said. "It's about an experience. It's a sense of community."

The Hardest Part of Growing Young

Keefe was candid about the challenges of building a company at 24, particularly as a young woman signing a 200-page, ten-year lease guarantee while investors questioned whether she and her partners had the experience to succeed. Early national expansion into markets like Colorado and California also meant starting from zero brand awareness each time, a headwind she says has only recently started paying off now that the brand has genuine national presence.

Her advice to her younger self: growing regionally before jumping into brand-new, unconnected markets might have smoothed that path. But she's also candid that youth and a little naivety were assets, not liabilities, when it came to committing fully to the risk.

What's Next

Toastique just marked its eighth anniversary at 65-plus locations and expects to cross the 100-unit mark sometime next year, a milestone Keefe notes fewer than 5 percent of franchise brands ever reach. Rather than treating that as the finish line, she frames it as validation to keep doing what's working: quality product, strong partners, and an evolving identity as a daily lifestyle brand rather than just a place to grab a smoothie.

Her go-to leadership touchstones are Jim Collins and the book Unreasonable Hospitality, both centered on the idea that hospitality culture, not just product, is what sustains a business long term.

Brianna Keefe is Founder and CEO of Toastique. Learn more at toastique.com or on Instagram @toastique.