Wing It On! is now available across Southern California — not through a traditional buildout, but by sliding onto the menu at all 20 Fresh Brothers Pizza locations in a single day. The move by parent company Craveworthy Brands marks the Connecticut-born wing brand's first West Coast presence and adds 20 points of distribution instantly, illustrating a portfolio co-branding model that sidesteps the capital and timeline costs of standalone expansion.
Guests at Fresh Brothers locations across Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego can now order Wing It On!'s bone-in wings and boneless bites alongside Fresh Brothers' existing menu of handmade pizzas, salads, pastas, and its newer Crustwiches. The wing program launches with five sauces, two dry rubs, and house-made dips — the same lineup that has earned Wing It On! nine awards across four consecutive National Buffalo Wing Festivals. The timing is deliberate: the brand heads to Buffalo, New York on August 29–30 to compete again at the festival, entering with wins in categories including Medium Traditional, Extra Hot, Savory, BBQ, and Hot from 2022 through 2025.
The Portfolio Play
For multi-brand operators, the Fresh Brothers rollout is a case study in leveraging existing real estate. Craveworthy — which operates more than 20 concepts across 300-plus U.S. and international locations — didn't need to sign a single new lease to put Wing It On! in front of Southern California consumers. "Being able to accelerate growth by leveraging the strength of our existing portfolio is exactly the kind of opportunity we can create when the right brands come together," said Josh Halpern, chief business officer at Craveworthy. The structure echoes a broader restaurant industry trend toward virtual and co-brand concepts that allow operators to extract more revenue per kitchen without proportional overhead increases.
Gregg Majewski, CEO and founder of Craveworthy, framed the pairing as a complementary fit rather than a menu stretch. Fresh Brothers, founded in Los Angeles in 2008, has built its identity around daily-made dough, vine-ripened tomato sauce, and additive-free cheese. Wing It On!, founded in 2011, has competed nationally on wing quality. "The brand already has an incredibly loyal fan base across Southern California and Wing It On! has proven it can compete with the best in the country," Majewski said.
Operator Implications
The rollout arrives as football season kicks off — a period when wing demand spikes and pizza-and-wings combinations are among the highest-volume catering and group-order categories in foodservice. Fresh Brothers is positioning the combined menu for game-day watch parties, catering, and dine-in, with online ordering available across all channels.
For franchisees and multi-unit operators watching the casual and fast-casual dining segment, the Craveworthy model raises a practical question: which brands in a portfolio share enough kitchen infrastructure and consumer occasion overlap to co-exist on a single ticket? Wings and pizza share fry and oven capacity in many configurations, making the operational lift relatively contained compared to adding an entirely new protein or cuisine type.
Matt Ensero, co-founder of Wing It On!, noted that the brand's competitive orientation keeps quality standards high even in a co-brand context. "We compete against the best wings in the country and win, so for us, wings are never an afterthought," he said. That positioning matters for Fresh Brothers' existing customer base, who will judge the wings against standalone wing specialists — not just as a pizza add-on.
As Food & Beverage Magazine and other trade outlets have tracked, multi-brand platform operators increasingly view intra-portfolio co-branding as a growth lever that carries lower risk than new-concept development or franchise recruitment. The Fresh Brothers and Wing It On! pairing gives Craveworthy a live market test of that thesis in one of the country's most competitive foodservice markets.
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.
