Business

Sweetgreen shares dropped 23% on Friday after the salad chain cut its 2025 outlook for the second quarter in a row.
The company said it saw issues with its loyalty program, weak consumer sentiment, tariff headwinds and store challenges.
CEO Jonathan Neman said only one-third of restaurants are performing at or above standards, while the remaining two-thirds “represent a meaningful opportunity for improvement.”

People walk past a Sweetgreen restaurant in Manhattan.
Jeenah Moon | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Sweetgreen shares dropped 23% on Friday after the salad chain cut its 2025 outlook for the second quarter in a row, citing issues with its loyalty program, weak consumer sentiment, tariff headwinds and store challenges.
For the full-year 2025, Sweetgreen now expects revenue of between $700 million and $715 million, down from its May prediction of $740 million to $760 million and its February outlook of $760 million to $780 million.

It also projects negative same-store sales for the full year, estimating declines of between 4% and 6%, down from its original outlook of single-digit growth. Restaurant-level profit margin for 2025 is expected to be 200 basis points lower than Sweetgreen’s latest outlook in May. That includes a 40 basis-point hit due to the effect of tariffs.
On a Thursday call with analysts, CEO Jonathan Neman said Sweetgreen had a “really, really rough quarter.”
He said both external headwinds and internal actions played a role in the performance, including “a more cautious consumer environment starting in April, lapping a tough comparison with last year’s successful steak launch and the transition of our new loyalty program at the beginning of the quarter.”
The company reported a second-quarter earnings and revenue miss, reporting a loss of 20 cents per share versus a loss of 12 cents expected by analysts surveyed by LSEG. Revenue came in at $186 million compared with the LSEG estimate of $192 million.
Same-store sales dropped 7.6% during the quarter, significantly underperforming the same quarter a year earlier when the company reported a same-store sales increase of 9.3%. Analysts were expecting a second-quarter decline of 5.5%, according to StreetAccount.

Executives said “loyalty headwinds” played a key role in the results. Neman said the transition from the Sweetgreen+ subscription program to a new program, SG Rewards, generated a 250 basis-point headwind to the company’s second-quarter same-store sales. He said Sweetgreen saw a falloff in revenue from that small but high-frequency cohort of Sweetgreen+ customers, but he said he believes the effect will be temporary.
Going forward, company leaders said they are focused on improving customer satisfaction and operations in stores.
Neman told investors on Thursday that only one-third of restaurants are performing at or above standards, while the remaining two-thirds “represent a meaningful opportunity for improvement.”
He said the company is aiming to improve operations through the leadership of its new chief operating officer, Jason Cochran, and the launch of a new program called Project One Best Way, focused on improving speed and food standards and increasing portion sizes.
Consumer sentiment has played a role in the company’s performance. Sweetgreen Chief Financial Officer Mitch Reback said pressure on consumer spending has persisted longer than expected.
“It’s pretty obvious that the consumer is not in a great place overall,” Neman said.

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Bankrupt home goods chain Bed Bath & Beyond is coming back to life through its new owners and licensees.
The first brick and mortar Bed Bath & Beyond store to open since its liquidation launched in Nashville, Tennessee, on Friday with potentially dozens more openings to come.
Bed Bath & Beyond’s intellectual property was acquired by then-Overstock Inc. in 2023, which later rebranded to Beyond Inc. and licensed the name to The Brand House Collective.

Signage is displayed outside a permanently closed Bed Bath & Beyond retail store in Hawthorne, California, on May 1, 2023. 
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

Bed Bath & Beyond is back — kind of. 
The bankrupt home goods chain is being resurrected by the owners and licensees of its intellectual property, which opened the first new Bed Bath & Beyond store in Nashville, Tennessee, on Friday with potentially dozens of more to come. 

This time around, the store has a new name — Bed Bath & Beyond Home — and marks a “fresh start” for the beloved brand, said Amy Sullivan, the CEO of The Brand House Collective, the store’s operator. 
“We’re proud to reintroduce one of retail’s most iconic names with the launch of Bed Bath & Beyond Home, beautifully reimagined for how families gather at home today,” Sullivan said in a news release. “With Bed Bath & Beyond Home we’re delivering on our mission to offer great brands, for any budget, in every room. It’s a powerful addition to our portfolio and a meaningful step forward in our transformation.”
In honor of the brand’s legacy, the new store will accept the brand’s famous 20% coupon, regardless of when it expired. 
“We encourage guests to bring in their legacy Bed Bath & Beyond coupons which we will gladly honor,” the company said in a news release. “The coupon we all know and love is back and for those who need one, a fresh version will be waiting at the door.”
Bed Bath and Beyond 2.0 has been several years in the making and involved a rigmarole of corporate acquisitions and rebrandings. When the original Bed Bath and Beyond filed for bankruptcy in April 2023 following a string of corporate missteps, it struggled to find a buyer and ended up liquidating and selling off its business in parts. Overstock.com later bought the brand’s intellectual property, rebranded its business to Beyond Inc. and launched an online-only version of Bed Bath and Beyond.

What followed from there was a dizzying array of corporate deal-making. Ultimately, Beyond took an ownership stake in Kirkland’s Inc., a home decor chain with around 300 stores across the U.S., and gave it the exclusive license to develop and create Bed Bath & Beyond Home stores, as well as Buy Buy Baby stores. 
Kirkland’s later rebranded to The Brand House Collective and plans to convert some of its existing Kirkland’s Home stores into more Bed Bath and Beyond shops. Friday’s launch in Nashville is the first of six planned for the market and, pending the results, it plans to convert around 75 additional stores through 2026.
The company said it chose Nashville for the launch because of its proximity to its corporate headquarters, which will allow it to “closely manage every detail and set the standard for future rollouts.”
While the relaunch is exciting for fans of the legacy brand, it comes at a difficult time for the home decor market. In many ways, Bed Bath & Beyond’s bankruptcy was the fault of its management team and execution missteps, but it also faced macro challenges as well, experts said at the time. Competition from players like Amazon, Walmart, Home Goods and Wayfair has made it harder for other brands to capture customer spend, and the overall sector has been soft for several years because of high interest rates and the sluggish housing market. 
Even the current leaders in the home decor space have seen soft trends and it’s unlikely that will change until interest rates fall and the housing market picks back up, some analysts have said.

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Dodge on Friday announced the 2026 Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat Jailbreak, a three-row muscle SUV with more than 6 million potential combinations for customization.
Dodge also announced the all-new Sixpack-powered muscle car, the 2026 Charger Scat Pack.
“It’s all about options and giving every customer what they need and a configuration they want. It’s about choice,” said Dodge CEO Matt McAlear at a media event last week.

2026 Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat Jailbreak in Green Machine (front). A Jailbreak Custom Color program will allow select Dodge customers to paint their Durango SRT Hellcat Jailbreak in nearly any color imaginable, including Stryker Purple (shown at rear).
Courtesy: Dodge

Stellantis subsidiary Dodge announced two new muscle cars on Friday, flexing its 2026 model year lineup and touting customization options for its customers.
The 2026 Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat Jailbreak is a new three-row muscle SUV featuring a 710-horsepower Hemi V-8 engine. According to Dodge, it provides more than 6 million potential combinations for customization through multiple wheel choices, interior seat colors, seat belt colors, and exterior colors and designs. It can also be customized to include seating for five, six or seven passengers.

The second new vehicle is the 2026 Charger Scat Pack, featuring a Sixpack twin-turbo inline-six engine. The Charger will be available in a high-output, 550-horsepower option, as well as a standard-output, 420-horsepower variant — called the Charger R/T. It will also be available as a two-door coupe or four-door sedan.
“This next generation Charger lineup delivers the most horsepower and most torque of any muscle car in its class, the widest body of any car in the industry, an award-winning interior, and, perhaps most important, what our customers have told us they want: the power to choose what fuels them,” said Dodge CEO Matt McAlear in a statement.
The launches come as Stellantis has been trying to recover from financial issues. New CEO Antonio Filosa last week on the automaker’s earnings call teased that the company would be bringing back popular nameplates that had been discontinued in the U.S. and launching new products in an effort to reconnect with customers.
The announcement adds the Jailbreak customization feature to Dodge’s previously announced 2026 model year Durango lineup. It also builds on the existing Charger lineup, which includes all-electric offerings through the Charger Daytona. The new muscle cars join Dodge’s offerings one day before the 10th anniversary of the automaker’s “Roadkill Nights” drag racing event, which attracts tens of thousands of people in Pontiac, Michigan.
McAlear said during the media event that U.S. sales for the existing Durango rose more than 50% from the first quarter of 2025 to the second quarter. Retail sales for the Durango were up 47% over the first half of 2024, he added.

2026 Dodge Charger models, including (clockwise from front) the SIXPACK-powered Dodge Charger Scat Pack Plus in Peel Out, all-electric Dodge Charger Daytona Scat Pack Plus in After Dark, SIXPACK-powered Dodge Charger R/T Plus in Bludicrous and all-electric Dodge Charger Daytona Scat Pack Plus in Triple Nickel.
Courtesy: Dodge

‘It’s about choice’

McAlear told reporters last week that the 2026 lineup is meant to meet customers where they are and meet the demands of the market at large.
“It’s all about options and giving every customer what they need and a configuration they want. It’s about choice,” McAlear said at a media event last week.
Dodge’s lineup build-out comes as automakers are grappling with changing policies surrounding electric vehicles under the Trump administration.
McAlear said several months ago, he believed there would be about a 30% industry-wide EV mix. But now, given changing EV policies, he said he doesn’t see that number being higher than 20% for a while.
“While regulatory standards will always move and attitudes around EVs will continue to evolve, we know one thing that doesn’t change: people’s desire for performance,” McAlear said during the media event.
In terms of pricing, the 420-horsepower Charger R/T will be available starting at $49,995. The 550-horsepower Charger Scat Pack will cost $54,995, while the all-electric two-door Charger Scat Pack has a price tag of $59,995.
Dodge is putting together pricing for the SRT Hellcat and the Jailbreak customization access, McAlear said.
Ordering will open this month for some options, but Dodge said other customizations will become available in the first half of 2026.

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Casual footwear company Crocs plans to reduce orders for the second half of the year.
Shares of Crocs shed nearly 30% Thursday after the company issued the stark warnings.
CEO Andrew Rees said the company is taking steps to protect profitability, including pulling back on promotional activity across retailers and taking back some of its older inventory.

Inside a Crocs store at Queens Center in New York.
Ryan Baker | CNBC

Casual footwear company Crocs plans to reduce orders for the second half of the year amid what its CEO called a “concerning” environment for the consumer.
“We see the U.S. consumer behaving cautiously around discretionary spending. They are faced with current and implied future price increases, which we think has the potential to be a further drag on an already choiceful consumer. Against this backdrop, our retail partners are acting more carefully and reducing their open-to-buy dollars in future seasons,” said CEO Andrew Rees on the company’s second-quarter earnings call this week, according to a FactSet transcript.

“The current environment in the second half is concerning, and we see that clearly reflected in retail order books. We strongly believe this is a time to make bold decisions for the future to sustain and advance a durable cash flow mode,” Rees added.
Shares of Crocs shed nearly 30% Thursday after the company issued the stark warnings and posted a weaker-than-expected forecast for the current quarter.
Thursday’s losses made for the stock’s worst day since October 2011.
Crocs imports most of its products from countries like Vietnam, China, Indonesia and Cambodia that are now subject to steep import tariffs.
Rees said the company is taking steps to protect profitability, including pulling back on promotional activity across retailers and taking back some of its older inventory, specifically for its Heydude shoe brand, in order to “reset” retail partners with new stock.

“This will create further headwinds to sales volume over the next several quarters,” Rees said on the earnings call.
Rees said in an earnings release Crocs had previously implemented $50 million in cost savings.
“Although these actions will impact the topline of our business in the short term, they will position our business to win, drive margin dollars, and support continued cash flow generation longer term,” he said in a release.
The company is projecting third-quarter revenue well below Wall Street estimates. Crocs expects revenue for the current quarter to shrink between 9% to 11% year over year. Analysts surveyed by LSEG expected revenue to be slightly higher over the year earlier.
Crocs is also forecasting a third-quarter adjusted operating margin of around 18% to 19%, down from 25.4% in the third-quarter a year prior.
The company declined to issue full-year guidance.
For the second quarter, Crocs reported a net loss of $492.3 million, or $8.82 per share, compared to a net income of $228.9 million, or $3.77 per share, during the same period a year earlier. That loss was driven by a $737 million non-cash impairment charge related to its Heydude brand.
Excluding that charge and accounting for other one-time items, the company posted adjusted earnings of $4.23 per share, topping Wall Street expectation for $4.01 per share, according to LSEG.
Revenue came in at $1.15 billion, an increase of 3.4% over the year prior and in line with the LSEG estimate of $1.14 billion.
— CNBC’s Melissa Repko and Sara Salinas contributed to this report. More

Flutter reported second-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street expectations Thursday.
The online sports-betting giant owns the dominant U.S. sportsbook FanDuel.
Flutter also raised its full-year guidance.

Online sports betting giant Flutter reported second-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street expectations Thursday.
The company reported adjusted earnings of $2.95 per share versus an estimated $2.08, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG. Revenue came in slightly higher than expectations at $4.19 billion against consensus expectations of $4.13 billion.

Flutter owns the dominant U.S. sportsbook FanDuel, and FanDuel’s holding a winning hand.
Its U.S. revenue for the quarter of $1.79 billion came in slightly higher than expectations, and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, was nearly $100 million higher than analyst consensus.
June was especially good for FanDuel in terms of sports outcomes. It delivered the highest gross revenue margin on record of 16.3%
Flutter also raised its full-year guidance, citing the effect of U.S. sports results and tax changes, among other things.
Despite the beats, in an exclusive interview with CNBC, CEO Peter Jackson said state taxes could have a real effect, potentially sending gamblers to offshore, illegal sportsbooks.
“If you look at Illinois,” Jackson said, “We’re very disappointed what they’ve done now. We think the taxes that they brought in will have a really, sort of, negative impact on the very recreational, super casual users.”

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Eli Lilly said the highest dose of its daily obesity pill helped patients lose almost 12% of their body weight, or roughly 27 pounds, at 72 weeks in a late-stage trial.
Eli Lilly’s pill, orforglipron, is one step closer to becoming the first needle-free alternative in the booming market for weight loss and diabetes drugs called GLP-1s. 
Some doctors lauded the weight loss results, while others made note of the rates of patients at the highest dose of the pill who discontinued treatment due to side effects.

A sign with the company logo sits outside of the headquarters of Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, Indiana, on March 17, 2024.
Scott Olson | Getty Images

Eli Lilly on Thursday said the highest dose of its daily obesity pill helped patients lose almost 12% of their body weight, or roughly 27 pounds, at 72 weeks in a late-stage trial, paving the way for its entrance into the market.
The pill’s weight loss was 11.2% when analyzing all patients regardless of discontinuations.

Shares of the company fell more than 7% in premarket trading on Thursday. Meanwhile, shares of rival Novo Nordisk, which is also working to bring an obesity pill to the market, jumped more than 7% on Thursday.
The data comes under what some Wall Street analysts were expecting for Eli Lilly’s oral GLP-1, with hopes for weight loss of around 15%. Some doctors said the results appear to be comparable to, but overall slightly lower, the level of weight loss seen with Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster weekly GLP-1 injection for obesity, Wegovy.
Some doctors also made note of the number of patients on the highest dose of the pill who discontinued treatment due to side effects or any other reason in the trial.
Still, other doctors lauded the results and the potential of the pill to reach new patients, such as those who are afraid of needles. 
“This is a strong and promising result for an oral agent,” said Dr. Jaime Almandoz, medical director of the Weight Wellness Program at UT Southwestern Medical Center, calling the weight loss “a significant and clinically meaningful outcome.”

“Injectables have set a high bar, but this study reinforces the potential for an oral GLP-1 to be transformative in obesity care, particularly for patients who are hesitant to start or maintain injectable therapies,” he continued. 
Dr. Mihail “Misha” Zilbermint, director of Endocrine Hospitalists at Johns Hopkins Community Physicians, said he believes the pill “has the potential to be a game changer, as long as people can tolerate the side effects.”
The trial results are among the pharmaceutical industry’s most closely watched studies of the year, and follow positive data in April from a phase 3 trial examining the experimental pill in diabetes patients. They bring Eli Lilly’s pill, orforglipron, one step closer to potentially becoming a new, needle-free alternative without dietary restrictions in the booming market for weight loss and diabetes drugs called GLP-1s. 
Eli Lilly is “not disappointed with these results. It’s right on thesis for us,” despite being “one or two points below what the Street had,” CEO David Ricks told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday.
“The goal was to create an oral pill that was convenient and can be made at a huge scale, really, for the mass market, and had weight loss that was competitive with other single-acting GLP-1s, and that’s what we’ve achieved,” Ricks said. He added that the pill’s percentage of weight loss is “in the range” of what most people who are overweight or want to improve their metabolic health want to achieve.

Ricks said Eli Lilly expects to submit the data to regulators by the end of the year, with hopes of launching the pill around the world “this time next year.”
That launch could fundamentally shift the space, helping more patients access the treatments and alleviating the supply shortfalls of existing injections. The more convenient and easier-to-manufacture pill could also help Eli Lilly solidify its dominance in the growing segment as other drugmakers, including its main rival Novo Nordisk, race to bring weight loss pills to market. 
There are roughly 8 million patients on injectable obesity and diabetes drugs, but likely around 170 million who could benefit from the medicines, said Ken Custer, president of Lilly Cardiometabolic Health, in an interview.
“In order to meet that demand, we’re going to need other options, including oral small molecules like orforglipron, which use different means of production and also don’t need as sophisticated of a supply chain to distribute it to patients,” he said.
Dr. Amy Sheer, professor of medicine and program director of the Obesity Medicine Fellowship at the University of Florida, said she hopes the pill will be less expensive than existing injections, which are costly largely due to the devices they come in. She said lower prices could help eliminate barriers to access for patients, potentially making insurers more willing to cover the drug. 
Many insurers still don’t cover GLP-1s for obesity. Wegovy and other drugs have list prices of roughly $1,000 before insurance. 

Detailed trial results

The highest dose of Eli Lilly’s pill helped more than 59% of patients lose at least 10% of their body weight and more than 39% of patients lose at least 15% of their weight, according to the trial results. 
Almandoz said the proportion of people who achieved “greater magnitudes” of weight loss was “very impressive for an oral agent,” adding that many people “often overlook the proportion of people achieving these high weight loss categories” and typically focus closely on the average weight loss
Orforglipron also helped lessen cardiovascular risk factors.
But data on how well some patients tolerated the pill in the trial came under some analysts’ estimates. 
About 10.3% of patients who took the highest dose of the pill — 36 milligrams — discontinued treatment due to side effects, compared with around 2.6% of those who took a placebo. Those side effects were mainly gastrointestinal, such as nausea and vomiting, and mild to moderate in severity. An estimated 24% of those who took the highest dose experienced vomiting, while 33.7% and 23.1% had nausea and diarrhea, respectively.
Ahead of the data, BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman said he expected less than 10% of patients on the highest dose of the pill to discontinue treatment due to side effects and lower rates of vomiting, nausea and diarrhea.
More patients stopped taking the pill due to side effects compared with existing GLP-1s on the market, said Dr. Caroline Apovian, co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The discontinuation rates due to side effects in late-stage trials on Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s weekly obesity injection Zepbound are around 7% or less.
She noted that almost a quarter of patients on the highest dose of the pill discontinued treatment for any reason, cautioning that the enthusiasm for orforglipron should be tempered “because we get all this excitement, and then the pill comes out, and then nobody can take it.”
It’s unclear why, apart from side effects, those patients discontinued the pill. Nearly 30% of those on a placebo discontinued treatment for any reason.
Eli Lilly’s Ricks said the company is not concerned about those dropout rates in the study.
“What we really want to see is that the medicine dropout rate is lower than placebo, and that’s what we saw here,” he said, referring to the discontinuation rates for any reason.
Ricks added that Eli Lilly was looking for a less than 12% dropout rate due to side effects, noting that the industry has seen 8% to 12% rates with GLP-1 drugs.
“We’re right in the middle,” he said. “Continuation rates in this category, in all chronic drug categories, are not perfect. But the dropout from the drug is what we pay attention to, and here again, we’re right on with the profile.”
The University of Florida’s Sheer said she doesn’t believe the discontinuation rates or side effects will be a deciding factor for physicians when prescribing the pill. 
She believes an oral option could actually make more physicians more comfortable prescribing a GLP-1 to patients. Some physicians are currently hesitant to prescribe injections because they “may not know how to tell patients how to use them,” Sheer added. 
Almandoz said prescribing decisions are going to depend on the patient’s specific needs and preferences, as well as access and affordability. An injectable GLP-1 may be the preferred option for patients whose priority is a greater level of weight loss or those who have significant cardiometabolic complications, or health issues that arise from cardiovascular diseases and metabolic disorders. 
But an oral GLP-1 could be the best fit for those who “prioritize simplicity or convenience or have these logistical challenges with injections,” he said.
The detailed results from the trial will be presented in September at a European medical meeting and published in a peer-reviewed journal. More phase three trial results on the pill will be shared later this year, including from a study on adults who have obesity or are overweight and have Type 2 diabetes.
Wegovy, Eli Lilly’s pill, orforglipron and Novo Nordisk’s diabetes pill Rybelsus all work by targeting a gut hormone called GLP-1 to promote weight loss and regulate blood sugar. But unlike those other medications, Eli Lilly’s pill is not a peptide medication. That means it is absorbed more easily in the body and doesn’t require dietary restrictions like Rybelsus does.
Eli Lilly is currently about three years ahead of other drugmakers developing pills, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Roche, Structure Therapeutics and Viking Therapeutics, Guggenheim analyst Seamus Fernandez previously CNBC.
Some analysts expect the market for GLP-1s to be worth more than $150 billion annually by the early 2030s. Oral GLP-1s could grow to be worth $50 billion of that total, Fernandez said.
— CNBC’s Angelica Peebles contributed to this report.

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American is adding seasonal service to Budapest, Prague and Buenos Aires for next summer.
Many of American’s summer routes were discontinued because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Flights are mostly leaving from its hubs in Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Philadelphia International Airport.

An American Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner lands at the Miami International Airport on December 10, 2021 in Miami, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images

American Airlines is reviving some of its pre-pandemic destinations like Prague and Budapest, Hungary, as international travel continues to hold up better than domestic demand.
Other additions include its first-ever Dallas Fort Worth International flights to Athens, Greece, and year-round nonstop service between Miami and Milan.

American is also extending service for next year’s World Cup, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Dallas and between Dallas and Zurich, where soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is based,. Those flights will run from May 21 to Aug. 4 of next year, a bid for more business travel and sports tourism.
Brian Znotins, American’s senior vice president of network and schedule planning, told CNBC that the airline saw high numbers of customers from Argentina travel to Doha, Qatar, during the 2022 World Cup and that he expects even more to travel to the 2026 World Cup, which will be played in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
He also said the airline is expanding its Europe service in a bet that customers would rather connect in a U.S. hub like Dallas or Charlotte, North Carolina.
“We took a fresh look at where the demand hotspots are in Europe and we continue to see strength in Italy and Greece,” Znotins said. “We continue to see high numbers of travelers connecting in Europe to get to places like Rome and Athens,” so the airline is adding more options from U.S. hubs.

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With Prague and Budapest service from American’s hub at Philadelphia International Airport, he said many customers already fly into one city and out of the other for Danube River cruises and other tours.

American’s unit revenue for domestic flights in the last quarter fell 6.4% from 2024, while trans-Atlantic revenue rose 5%.
Many of American’s summer routes were discontinued because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Znotins said the changes weren’t just a return to that period.
“We’ve redesigned the entire airline based on today’s demand environment and not some desire to get back to 2019,” he said. “Everything has changed.”
American will use Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners for all the new flights except for Zurich to Dallas, which will be flown by Boeing 777-200s. More

Craveworthy Brands is now investor and managing partner of Gregorys Coffee.
Craveworthy Brands has been a prolific restaurant investor since its founding in 2022.
Under its stewardship, New York City-based Gregorys plans to expand nationwide by franchising its locations.

Gregorys Coffee was founded in 2006 and has more than 50 locations.
Source: Gregorys Coffee

Craveworthy Brands is now investor and managing partner of Gregorys Coffee, a New York City-based coffee chain with dreams of a nationwide footprint.
The two companies announced the deal on Thursday. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Craveworthy Brands, a fast-growing restaurant holding company, has become a prolific investor since its founding in 2022. Its portfolio includes legacy chains such as Genghis Grill and BD’s Mongolian Grill, emerging concepts including Shaquille O’Neal’s Big Chicken as well as several virtual brands that only offer delivery.
Gregorys was founded in 2006. The regional coffee chain is often counted as part of the third-wave coffee trend that focused on quality beans and artisanal craft, along with peers Blue Bottle Coffee and Intelligentsia Coffee. Today, Gregorys has more than 50 locations, but the deal with Craveworthy Brands is meant to help franchise Gregorys and expand beyond its tristate stronghold.
Founder Gregory Zamfotis will stay on as president of the brand.
“Gregory has built something special: a cult following, a craft product and a clear identity. Our role is to protect that, while layering in the operational firepower to grow thoughtfully,” Craveworthy Brands founder and CEO Gregg Majewski said in a statement.
More than two decades ago, Majewski served as CEO of sandwich chain Jimmy John’s, growing it from a couple dozen restaurants to 300 locations by the time he left in 2003. With Craveworthy Brands, he is looking to build a restaurant IP company, similar to the early days of private equity firm Roark Capital, he told CNBC in an interview in May. Roark owns Subway, Dunkin’ parent Inspire Brands and Cinnabon owner GoTo Foods.

When looking for potential additions to Craveworthy Brands’ portfolio, Majewski has said he’s targeting brands with fewer than 75 locations and the ability to franchise easily. Today, the company’s holdings include more than a dozen eateries, and its investments range from outright ownership to controlling stakes. With the Gregorys acquisition, the company’s annual system sales will cross $400 million, a spokesperson said.
Craveworthy Brands’ latest deal comes as beverages increasingly drive traffic in the restaurant industry. Although Starbucks sales are slumping, newer chains such as Dutch Bros and 7 Brew have seen growth soar in recent years. Fast-food chains such as McDonald’s and Yum Brands-owned Taco Bell are testing broader drink menus, with options to customize and more ways to caffeinate, from refreshers to flavored cold brew.
Harborfield Management, Branded Hospitality and restaurant-focused venture capital firm Kitchen Fund also invested in Gregorys as part of the funding round. Like Majewski and Zamfotis, Kitchen Fund’s managing partner also happens to be named Greg.

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