Philadelphia-based PrimoHoagies has appointed Glen Brandeburg as chief operating officer, adding a franchise operations veteran with more than 30 years of multi-unit leadership experience — including a stint overseeing roughly 800 Wendy's restaurants as division vice president — to anchor the family-owned sandwich chain's push toward disciplined national growth.
Brandeburg's mandate is to codify best practices across PrimoHoagies' 88-unit franchised system into scalable playbooks, improve business-intelligence and reporting tools for franchisees, and protect the quality standards the brand has maintained since its 1992 founding. According to the chain's 2025 Franchise Disclosure Document, systemwide AUV is calculated on the 88 franchised locations open for the full 2024 calendar year — a figure that underscores the relatively tight footprint the brand is now trying to broaden.
Executive Bench Deepens
Brandeburg is the fourth C-suite or senior appointment PrimoHoagies has made in roughly 12 months. The chain previously added Angela Coppler as SVP of development, Alex Chu as CFO, and Madalyn Weintraub as VP of marketing. Owner, President and CEO Nicholas Papanier Jr. has framed the build-out as a four-pillar strategy: development recruits the right franchisees; finance sharpens unit economics; marketing drives consumer demand; and operations locks in consistent execution. "Development brings us the right locations and the right franchisees. Finance strengthens profitability. Marketing builds customer demand. Operations ensures we consistently deliver on the promise our brand makes every day," Papanier said.
Notably, Brandeburg and Coppler worked together for more than 14 years at Wendy's, collaborating on large-scale restaurant reinvestment and modernization programs. That shared institutional knowledge of aligning operations and development functions is a deliberate structural advantage PrimoHoagies is counting on as it enters new markets under area development agreements.
Franchisee Economics in Focus
For operators evaluating sandwich-segment franchise opportunities, the operational infrastructure Brandeburg is building is as relevant as headline unit counts. The fast-casual and QSR sandwich category has grown increasingly competitive, with national players investing heavily in digital ordering, drive-thru throughput, and labor-efficiency tools — pressures that hit smaller regional chains hardest at the store-level margin line. Brandeburg's stated priority is to reduce franchisee operational complexity through better reporting and standardized systems, enabling operators to redirect attention toward team development and guest experience rather than back-office management.
His Wendy's background — spanning corporate field leadership, franchise support, and ultimately the franchisee side as president of a multi-brand organization running Wendy's and Papa John's units — positions him to translate both franchisor strategy and franchisee P&L reality into practical operating frameworks. "Great brands are built by creating systems that help people succeed consistently," Brandeburg said. "What attracted me to PrimoHoagies is that this is a brand that has fiercely protected its commitment to quality while proving there is tremendous opportunity to grow."
PrimoHoagies has earned USA Today's "Best Sandwich Shop" recognition for three consecutive years, a marketing asset the brand is leaning on for franchisee recruitment as it targets carefully selected markets nationwide. With the full leadership team now in place, the chain enters its expansion phase with a tighter organizational structure than many independent regional concepts its size — a factor that could meaningfully affect franchisee retention and unit-level performance as the system scales.
For more on franchise development trends in the sandwich segment and how regional chains are building operational infrastructure for national growth, see related coverage on Foodservice News.
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.
