The Appointments
GoTo Foods, the Atlanta-based franchisor operating more than 7,500 units across seven brands, named Lucy Brady president of Jamba effective September 8, part of a broader leadership realignment that also reshapes oversight of Moe's Southwest Grill, Cinnabon, Carvel and the company's digital and technology functions.
Brady arrives with a resume built at the intersection of large-scale consumer packaged goods and quick-service innovation. Most recently she served as president of Grocery & Snacks at Conagra Brands, where she managed a $5.0 billion portfolio spanning more than 60 brands. Before that, she held senior roles at McDonald's covering strategy, innovation and digital customer experience — including formative work on MyMcDonald's Rewards, McDelivery and digital ordering. That QSR-platform background is directly relevant to Jamba's standing as a franchise-heavy, off-premise-capable smoothie and juice concept competing in a segment where digital ordering and loyalty have become table-stakes.
Portfolio Restructuring
The reshuffle extends well beyond the Jamba appointment. Nathan Baldwin, who joined GoTo Foods in 2025 to lead Auntie Anne's, has been elevated to president of Specialty Brands, now carrying oversight of Cinnabon, Carvel and the company's co-brands strategy. The consolidation groups complementary snack and dessert concepts — all with heavy mall, airport and non-traditional footprints — under a single P&L owner, a structure that can simplify area development agreements and co-location deals for franchisees. Baldwin brings more than 25 years of restaurant industry experience to the expanded mandate.
Francisco Bram, GoTo Foods' chief growth officer, takes on the added title of president of Moe's Southwest Grill while retaining enterprise-level responsibility for loyalty, marketing, consumer research, analytics, PR and social. Bram, whose background spans Chewy, Albertsons Companies and Uber, is tasked with advancing a repositioning of Moe's brand identity — including menu and in-restaurant experience — alongside franchisee growth strategy. Moe's has faced a competitive fast-casual Mexican segment crowded by Chipotle, QDOBA and a wave of regional players, making a sharper brand narrative a near-term priority.
Biplav Misra, who had been overseeing digital and off-premise channels, formally adds Technology to his title, becoming chief digital & technology officer. Unifying digital, technology and off-premise under one leader reflects an increasingly common structural move in multi-brand franchise systems, where fragmented tech stacks create friction for franchisees managing loyalty integrations, POS upgrades and third-party delivery partnerships across multiple concepts.
What It Means for Franchisees
Chief Executive Officer Omer Gajial framed the moves in terms of franchisee support and organizational speed. "Strengthening our leadership structure will create greater organizational agility and allow us to remain focused on what matters most: growing category-leading brands, supporting franchisee success, and delivering experiences that keep guests coming back," he said.
For GoTo Foods' franchisee base — which spans all 50 states and 72 countries and territories — the leadership consolidations carry practical implications. Specialty Brands operators gain a single point of contact for co-brand development and multi-unit growth conversations. Moe's franchisees get a president whose remit directly connects brand repositioning to the company's enterprise marketing and analytics infrastructure. And the integrated digital-technology structure promises faster deployment of tools that affect daily unit-level operations, from online ordering to loyalty redemption.
GoTo Foods operates under a multi-brand franchise model that depends heavily on system-level royalty revenue, making franchisee profitability and unit growth the primary levers for enterprise performance. The depth of this leadership rebuild — touching four brands and a core technology function simultaneously — signals the company is positioning for an active development cycle heading into 2027, with brand relevance and digital capability as the foundation. For comparable franchise system moves, see recent coverage of multi-brand portfolio strategy shifts across the broader QSR and fast-casual landscape.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
