Emilee Wentland | Updated
Brix Holdings owns the Friendly’s restaurant chain. Multi-unit franchisee Amol Kohli bought Brix Holdings, the company announced this week.
As a child of immigrant parents, Amol Kohli learned the importance of hard work while growing up.
He displayed that work ethic as a teenager when he landed a gig as a server at a newly opened Friendly’s and worked his way up to a shift manager before attending Drexel University in Philadelphia. At the time, he aimed to work on Wall Street with his business degrees.
His former boss offered him a job working in the back office to help run a few Friendly’s locations and Kohli grew to be a 30-unit Friendly’s operator.
“This is an industry that will humble you over and over and over,” Kohli said. “Every time you think you want to celebrate a win, what I’m going to tell you is that if the win makes sense, there’s nothing to celebrate. You just keep going.”
This week, Kohli’s company Legacy Brands bought Friendly’s parent company, Brix Holdings.
“Did I ever think back then that I’d end up with an opportunity like this? Probably not. I don’t think I’m that wishful of a thinker,” Kohli said.
Brix’s other brands are Clean Juice, Humble Donut Co., Red Mango, Orange Leaf, Smoothie Factory and Souper Salad. CEO Sherif Mityas will continue to lead Brix, while Kohli assumed the position of chairman of the board.
Kohli will still operate his portfolio of Friendly’s restaurants.
“I look at a ‘no sharp turns’ mentality. What I don’t want to do is pivot to anything that could be different just for the sake of it being different,” Kohli said.
As a franchisee and former restaurant employee, he has similar experiences to other operators and staff. “It’s good to have a pulse in the field. It’s good to know what the people at the front lines, which was me at one point, were dealing with every day,” he said. “I’m the guy that’s been paying royalties my entire life, too. I understand.”
Kohli declined to share terms of the transaction.
Brix’s brands have struggled to grow in recent years. Frozen yogurt concept Orange Leaf has closed 21 locations since 2022, ending last year with 61 stores. Clean Juice, the struggling better-for-you brand which Brix bought last summer, closed 10 stores in 2024. It ended the year with 69 units.
Related: Clean Juice Model Change Prompts Pushback as Franchisees File Arbitration Claims
Friendly’s, founded 90 years ago, has about 100 restaurants; but at one time it had closer to 500 units. Smoothie Factory had 21 locations in 2022, but ended last year with just seven stores. Red Mango, another froyo franchise, closed 20 of its shops in three years for 45 locations left.
Now, Kohli is pushing Brix into growth mode.
Amol Kohli is chairman of the board and the new owner of Brix Holdings.
“My ultimate, upfront goal is to continue to grow the brands organically, and then also look at strategic acquisitions where they make sense,” Kohli said.
A franchisee buying a brand, let alone an entire portfolio company, is relatively rare.
But earlier this year, Workout Anytime’s largest franchisee bought a majority stake in the 200-unit brand. Jerry Pugh bought the gym franchise from founders Steve Strickland and John Quattrocchi in April.
In 2022, Jack in the Box franchisee Yadav Enterprises bought 80-unit Nick the Greek, which then had 38 units. The year prior it bought Taco Cabana for $85 million.
Kohli said that while it’s fairly uncommon for a franchisee to purchase a brand, he has the experience necessary to own a portfolio of companies.
As a franchisee, he’s had the opportunity to do advisory work and learn more about sales, operations, real estate and land development.
“I got exposure into just about every part of the business that a franchisor would otherwise be doing,” Kohli said.
He’s weathered the challenges of operating a restaurant throughout his career, with tough economic cycles scattered throughout.
Keeping that operator-first mentality as a franchisor is essential for Kohli, but he also emphasized the importance of giving store employees the chance to grow—the same as his managers did.
“We’re a business that needs people that want to do the job,” Kohli said, “and it’s our job to help identify those people and move them up.”
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