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The bright and upbeat brunch franchise is having a growth surge in the Southeast, a journey that Spadea Lignana Franchise Attorneys is overseeing and championing along the way.

Toasted Yolk, the 21-unit breakfast and lunch eatery started in Texas, is on a whirlwind journey in its fifth year of franchising. With six corporate locations, 15 franchise units and 65 in development, the brand is at a point where “the franchises are almost selling themselves,” according to Chris Milton, co-founder of the company. The business’ growth looks to only continue as Spadea Lignana Franchise Attorneys guides its leaders along the way.

The concept for Toasted Yolk came about in 2010 when Milton and co-founder Matthew DeMott noticed a recurring theme in the breakfast market. Essentially every place they would take their families to eat was the same: a “country-style atmosphere with rooster decor.” They were all always busy, so the two knew the breakfast crowd was a dependable one.   

“We just felt like we could do it better. We wanted to do something different,” Milton said. So the two set out to have upbeat breakfast establishments, with full-scale bars, flat-screen TVs, and bright, cheery atmospheres. The concept began in Texas and began franchising in 2017, with the first franchisee signing on for the Houston suburb Katy.

Since then, expansion has accelerated quickly. The brand’s first out-of-state store came to Dothan, Alabama, at the end of 2021, which was a major milestone. And now the brand has a brunch location open or in development in nearly every southeastern state. Milton said the company is on track to have 100 units in development by this year’s close.

That explosive growth is something that the brunch franchise has been able to do in a methodical and guided way with the aid of its partners at Spadea Lignana. The two companies have been working together since 2019, when Milton and DeMott were referred to the Spadea Lignana team from their franchise sale contacts. The law group has been instrumental in helping Toasted Yolk begin to touch new pockets of the country. 

“Our partnership with Spadea Lignana has been fantastic. They are super great to deal with and very responsive. It’s nice, as we’re growing, to have a company that can expand with us,” Milton said. “It’s been huge having a good legal ear because when you first start franchising, you don’t know what you don’t know. With their experience, they’ve been really able to kind of guide us through that process, and they’ve been extremely helpful. They help make sure all the I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed and that we keep ourselves growing in a way that is lawful and makes sense for everybody.”

With their trendy brunch concept and the guidance of the franchising law experts at Spadea Lignana, Milton believes that the company is truly set up for success. He said the brand’s outlook in terms of growing and standing out in the breakfast and lunch segment is bright. 

“I believe there isn’t anybody really that competes well with us. So I think the sky’s the limit at this point. I think we could be a nationwide chain,” Milton said. 

Toasted Yolk has access to the Client Access Portal (CAP) that Spadea Lignana launched a few months ago, a cloud-based platform that helps house franchise agreements, franchise disclosure documents (FDDs) and state-specific restrictions in one convenient and easy place. The system  “allows franchisors to easily know where they can sell and where they can’t. The cornerstone of the program is an ‘ounce of prevention’ mentality to prevent small problems from becoming big (and expensive) problems,” the firm’s website states.