A new restaurant concept combining the Cinnabon cinnamon roll and Carvel ice cream is coming to metro Atlanta.
Cinnabon Swirl, as it’s called, is the first original concept by Atlanta-based fast casual restaurant giant GoTo Foods, which owns Auntie Anne’s, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Schlotzsky’s and the two aforementioned dessert franchises. GoTo Foods acquired its other brands over the years, while Cinnabon Swirl is its own creation.
The menu will feature ice cream sandwiches, cinnamon rolls heated in a panini press, rotating flavors of soft serve and sundaes, and other confections, according to an announcement from the company.
GoTo Foods plans to open four locations this year, though 30 are in the pipeline, according to the news release. The company’s first Georgia location will be in Kennesaw, expected to open later this year.
This isn’t the first time the Carvel and Cinnabon brands have been housed under one roof. GoTo Foods, formerly known as Focus Brands, has several co-branded Cinnabon and Carvel restaurants, which means items from both chains are produced in the same kitchen with streamlined menus. There are two products to sell in the same real estate. In fact, there’s a lot of cross-pollination among the company’s restaurant brands. All 330 locations of Schlotzsky’s have a small Cinnabon bakery. Auntie Anne’s and juice bar chain Jamba have several co-branded locations, too.
Credit: GoTo Foods
Credit: GoTo Foods
Part of this co-branding effort is designed to launch its mall-based brands, like Auntie Anne’s and Cinnabon, into more traditional venues.
“We had to figure out: How do you make this thing work outside the four walls of a mall?” GoTo Foods’ CEO Jim Holthouser said in an interview with The Atlanta-Journal Constitution last week. “When you look at the average unit volume for an Auntie Anne’s inside of a mall, it’s not sufficient enough to justify the rents of a street side location or a location in a strip mall. It doesn’t work. But when you add a second brand to that, all of a sudden the game changes. The economics start to pencil out.”
But unlike the co-branded Carvel-Cinnabon locations, the new concept is offering an entirely different menu.
The restaurant will meet the demand for increasingly new desserts, Jennifer Holwill, an executive chef at Cinnabon, said in the release.
The launch comes as other dessert chains, such as Crumbl Cookies or Jeremiah’s Italian Ice, open hundreds of new locations via franchising. According to data from Yelp, dessert shops saw the second-largest increase in new restaurant openings between May 2023 and April 2024 compared with the same period the year prior. Shaved ice, crepe, doughnut and ice cream shops also saw increases. Perhaps this is the impact of so-called “little treat culture,” which describes Gen-Z’s propensity to splurge on desserts, drinks or other treats as a reward or form of self-care.
Cinnabon has a much wider footprint in the United States than Carvel. As of December 2023, there were 952 franchised Cinnabon bakeries and 326 franchised Carvel shops, according to both brands’ franchise disclosure documents.
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