Good Morning Wolf Pack,

Today's newsletter highlights Pokeworks, a fast-casual poke franchise whose 52 full-year franchised restaurants averaged about $1.08M in sales in 2025 on a roughly $435K investment midpoint.

Enjoy!

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FRANCHISE OF THE WEEK

Pokeworks

Fast Facts

Background

• HQ: Irvine, California

• Founded in 2015, began franchising in 2016

• Pokeworks is a fast-casual poke chain built around customizable bowls, burritos and salads, with a "Poke Your Way" build-your-own approach.

Location Trends

It started with one Midtown Manhattan shop in 2015 and began franchising a year later. By the end of 2025 there were 63 franchised and 6 company-owned restaurants. The company says it now has 85 locations across 22 states, with 8 more under construction. Slow and steady, which in restaurants, isn't the worst thing.

Franchise Fees

• Royalty: 6% of gross sales

• Brand Fund: 1.5% of gross sales

• Franchise Fee: $40,000

Financial Overview

• The below table discloses Krokit information on 52 Pokeworks franchised locations that were open and operating for the full 2025 calendar year, using emojis I’ve definitely never used anywhere else before.

Investment Range: $270K–$600K 🍣🍣🍣🍣

Average Revenue: ~$1.08M 🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣

💰 Wolf's Unofficial Profit Potential: decent on sales, a question mark on profit. Pokeworks doesn't disclose expenses or net income. The top 20% of stores averaged $1.74M in sales and the bottom 20% averaged $631K.

The Wolf's Take

Poke had its trendy moment (and plenty of shops flamed out), but now that the smoke has cleared, Pokeworks is still standing with good numbers to show for it.

The 2026 FDD shows the 52 franchised restaurants open all of 2025 averaged about $1.08M in sales against an investment midpoint of roughly $435K, so about 2.5x, and that average was up 10.6% from 2024.

Here's where I slow down, though: The median store did $944K, and only 40% of them beat the average.

The gap between the top 20% ($1.74M) and the bottom 20% ($631K) is pretty massive.

There's no profit disclosure, so you're guessing at margins while royalty and brand fund alone take about $80K a year at the average.

I like the concept and the sales-to-investment ratio, but this is a location-driven restaurant business, so learning from the owners in the bottom half would be worth your time too if you pursued this brand.

Resources

• Pokeworks Franchise Opportunities

• Pokeworks Builds Momentum in First Half of 2026 with Franchise Growth and Menu Innovation (PR Newswire)

SMB TWEET OF THE WEEK

The Era of GLP-1s - Bill D’Alessandro

This tweet from @BillDA stood out to me this morning because I literally just had this conversation right before I saw it. Funny coincidence!

It’s a topic you will hear about more and more in 2027, so if enough of you are interested in a deeper dive on this, let me know.

WOLF BITES

• Uber Eats dives into catering with $2B buyout of company serving 140,000 US restaurants 🍽️

• Bloom raises $3.6M to become the ‘Alibaba’ of American manufacturing 💰

• The mega merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. is complete 👀

• Stanford scientists find a way to regrow knee cartilage in old mice 🦴

• Wind turbine taller than the Eiffel Tower rises in Germany 🌬️

• Underdog, a private on-device AI assistant, launches in invite-only beta 🔒

That’s it for this edition of The Wolf Report. Feel free to reply with any questions or feedback. Thanks and see you next week!

— The Wolf