Wild Bill's Craft Beverage Co. ended the second quarter of 2026 with 20 active franchise operators, up from 16 at the start of the year, as the mobile nonalcoholic craft soda brand deepens its footprint at convention centers, fairgrounds, and corporate events across the country. New franchisees came online in Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Washington, D.C., and San Diego, and the company says it remains on pace to award 10 franchise agreements before year's end.
Growth by the Numbers
The brand is projecting net system sales growth of 15% to 20% in 2026 — a trajectory backed by hard event volume. Wild Bill's executed 504 events in 2025 and expects to service more than 600 this year. To keep pace, the company built five new mobile beverage wagons in the first half of the year and has five more in production, putting the system on track to operate nearly 60 units nationwide by December.
For prospective operators, the company recently expanded its Item 19 financial performance representation, giving franchise candidates more visibility into system-wide revenue data — a move that signals confidence in the model's replicability and can shorten the sales cycle with serious buyers evaluating beverage franchise opportunities.
Venue Partnerships Drive Stability
What distinguishes Wild Bill's from most food-and-beverage franchise concepts is the depth of its venue relationships. The brand operates as a year-round subcontractor at properties including the Las Vegas Convention Center, Salt Palace Convention Center, Mountain America Expo Center, and Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Altogether, the system serves guests at more than 100 leading venues, convention centers, fairgrounds, and entertainment destinations across 40 states.
Those institutional partnerships provide a pipeline of guaranteed bookings that most event-dependent concepts lack — a meaningful underwrite for new franchisees still building their own sales channels. Mike Quilty, CEO of Wild Bill's, pointed to speed-to-revenue as a key differentiator. "Unlike a traditional restaurant concept that can take years to open, our operators can begin booking events and making sales almost immediately," he said.
Private Events Becoming a Core Channel
Beyond fairs and festivals, franchise operators are increasingly booking employee appreciation events, university functions, grand openings, and private parties — a channel the brand is now actively cultivating. Quilty called private and corporate events "an increasingly important part of our business," noting strong inbound demand from corporations and universities looking for experiential food-and-beverage activations.
The pivot matters for operators evaluating seasonality risk. Festival-heavy models can leave franchisees exposed during slower calendar windows; a robust private-event pipeline smooths revenue across the year and broadens the client base well beyond traditional hospitality and events operators.
As a veteran-owned business, Wild Bill's also ties franchise recruitment to veteran employment initiatives and partnerships with veteran-focused nonprofits — a positioning that resonates with a specific recruiting audience and may provide marketing advantages in select markets.
With leadership focused on franchise development, major-venue expansion, and growing the private-event business through the back half of 2026, the brand appears intent on proving that a nonalcoholic craft beverage concept built around live events can scale into a durable, multi-unit franchise system.
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.
