Pickleman's Gourmet Café has added Jim Morey to its executive advisory board, tapping a career operator whose resume spans Wawa, Outback Steakhouse, and McDonald's to sharpen the fast-casual chain's franchise expansion strategy. The Columbia, Missouri-based brand operates more than 30 locations across Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Nebraska, and Texas.
Morey's Operator Credentials
Morey spent more than a decade at Wawa, Inc. in a succession of C-suite roles—Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing/Brand Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Financial Officer—with oversight spanning brand, marketing, IT, store operations, real estate, and supply chain. Before Wawa, he served as VP–Finance at Outback Steakhouse under Bloomin' Brands and as Senior Financial Director at McDonald's Corporation. He holds an MBA in Marketing and Strategy from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a B.S. in Accounting from Illinois State University.
That breadth of experience—covering both the financial architecture and consumer-facing brand building of large multi-unit systems—is precisely what Pickleman's Gourmet Café is seeking as it moves to scale beyond its Midwest footprint. Morey's work at Wawa, a brand that grew into a regional convenience-foodservice institution under consistent operational discipline, is particularly relevant for a fast-casual concept trying to build durable unit economics across a franchise network.
Unit Economics as the North Star
Morey was direct about his strategic focus. "If the individual store works and provides strong returns for the operator, everything else flows from that," he said. He pointed to Pickleman's better-for-you positioning—fresh sandwiches, soups, salads, and pizzas made with responsibly sourced ingredients—as a product foundation that supports the economics when executed correctly. His stated ambition is growth of 10, 20, or 30-plus stores per year over the coming years.
Pickleman's Founder and CEO Doug Stritzel framed the hire in operator-first terms. "Jim's done the job at scale—finance, ops, and brand—and he's laser-focused on store-level returns," Stritzel said. "His proven experience turning organizations into legacy brands is truly some of the best in the world."
For prospective franchisees, Morey emphasized the existing playbook rather than reinvention: the brand offers a structured operational system that hands-on, culture-minded operators can execute to achieve the unit performance already demonstrated by current franchisees.
Implications for Fast-Casual Franchising
The appointment reflects a broader pattern in fast-casual franchise expansion, where emerging multi-unit brands are recruiting C-suite talent from large-scale foodservice organizations to build infrastructure ahead of aggressive unit growth. Advisory boards stocked with executives who have navigated the operational and financial complexity of thousand-unit systems can provide franchisee-facing credibility alongside internal strategic guidance.
Founded in 2005, Pickleman's has spent two decades refining its model in the competitive Midwest better-for-you sandwich segment. Adding Morey signals the brand is shifting from measured regional growth to a more deliberate national franchising posture—a transition that demands precisely the kind of multi-unit financial and brand expertise Morey brings from his time at Wawa and McDonald's.
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.
