Cheez-It is planting a flag in the mall food court revival. The Mars, Incorporated snack brand is partnering with Chain — the American Pop Cuisine concept founded by B.J. Novak — to open the Cheez-It Court, a custom-branded food stall running daily from September 2 through September 30 at Westfield Topanga Mall in Canoga Park, California. The activation marks the inaugural brand-partner slot in Chain's six-month food court residency at the Los Angeles property.
The three-item menu leans hard into snack-brand integration rather than simple co-branding. The Cheez-Y-Bun pairs a warm cinnamon roll with Cheez-It Extra Cheesy–seasoned cream cheese frosting, shortbread crumble, salted caramel crunch, and a whole cracker on top. The Crunchy Cheez-Dog wraps a Wagyu hot dog in a panko-and-Cheez-It crust, finishing with mustard, ketchup, pickle, and a dusting of cracker seasoning — a nod to the viral Korean corn dog format that has migrated steadily from social media into brick-and-mortar foodservice. The Cheez-Steak stuffs sliced ribeye, American cheese, grilled onions, and pickled jalapeños into a Cheez-It Extra Cheesy–seasoned hoagie roll, topped with dill pickle aioli and a Hot & Spicy cracker crumble.
The Operator Angle
For foodservice and restaurant concept developers watching the brand-residency model, the Cheez-It Court is a textbook case of a CPG brand using an existing hospitality platform rather than building its own. Chain supplies the operational infrastructure and the captive foot-traffic environment; Cheez-It supplies the identity and the promotional lift. Nicole Sorensen, VP of Marketing for Cheez-It, framed the stall as the latest in a series of in-real-life brand experiences — following activations like Studio Cheez and the Cheez-In Diner — designed to demonstrate flavor versatility beyond the snack aisle.
Chain's Chief Creative Officer Nicholas Kraft tied the concept directly to a broader retail-hospitality trend: "Malls are back, and it's not just nostalgia — it's a younger generation discovering that hanging out somewhere in person, with nothing to do but gaze and graze, is actually really fun." That observation aligns with what beverage and food operators are seeing as experiential dining concepts increasingly anchor repositioned retail centers, giving malls a reason for traffic beyond retail anchors.
Hours and What Comes Next
The Cheez-It Court operates Monday and Tuesday from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. PST; Wednesday and Thursday from noon to 8 p.m.; and Friday through Sunday from noon to 9 p.m. Following the stall's grand opening, Cheez-It plans to publish all three recipes on CheezIt.com, extending the campaign's reach to consumers who can't visit the Los Angeles location. The move is consistent with a wider industry pattern in which limited-time foodservice activations serve as content and recipe-marketing engines long after the physical event closes.
For operators and brand strategists, the structure here — CPG brand as anchor tenant in a rotating food-court residency — offers a replicable template for mall repositioning projects seeking differentiated, time-limited draws that generate social content alongside foot traffic. Food & Beverage Magazine has tracked similar crossover activations as snack brands accelerate their push into direct-to-consumer foodservice formats.
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.
