Zaxbys entered 2026 as a member of the 1,000-unit chicken club for the first time in its 36-year history — joining Chick-fil-A, KFC, Wingstop, and Popeyes in that exclusive tier. QSR Magazine's deep dive into the milestone tells a story we know well at Berry AI, because we've had a front-row seat to part of it: this isn't a marketing story. It's an operations story.
From three net openings to a thousand-unit brand
Rewind to 2021. Zaxbys had the brand equity to scale, but the trajectory was heading the wrong way: from 91 net new restaurants in 2015 down to just three in the 2020–2021 window. Goldman Sachs had acquired the chain in late 2020 and brought in Bernard Acoca — a Starbucks and El Pollo Loco veteran — as only the second CEO in company history.
Acoca's "Grow to Win" strategy rested on five pillars: lower costs, fix operations, accelerate digital, sharpen the brand, and reignite development. The results compounded: 11 net openings in 2022, 20 in 2023, 26 in 2024, and 36 in 2025 — crossing the 1,000-restaurant mark (1,005 at year-end: 865 franchised, 140 affiliate-owned) with $2.754 billion in systemwide sales.
Fixing a "painfully slow" drive-thru
For a brand where the drive-thru mixes roughly 70 percent of sales, pillar two was existential. QSR Magazine describes drive-thru times that were, in the brand's own telling, "painfully slow."
The fix was systematic: reorganized back-of-house, rebuilt throughput processes, order-taking tablets, better station ergonomics, training, and experience-forward scorecards. And to make every one of those changes measurable, Zaxbys deployed Berry AI's camera-based drive-thru timers — giving operators visibility into the full customer journey and surfacing exactly where the bottlenecks were.
The outcome, per QSR Magazine: speed of service improved more than 20 percent, and order accuracy increased 12 percent. Zaxbys also added front-of-house monitors to distinguish in-restaurant guests from digital orders — another data point feeding the same discipline: measure honestly, fix what the data shows.
Highlight: profitability up 40 percent
Here's the number that should get every operator's attention. In QSR Magazine's 2026 QSR 50 report (Zaxbys ranks No. 27), CEO Bernard Acoca says franchisee profitability has improved roughly 40 percent since 2021, driven by better chicken procurement, simplified operations, and new "Modern Farmhouse" prototypes that cost 30 to 75 percent less to build.
That's the flywheel: operational improvements → stronger unit economics → operators who want to build more restaurants. Zaxbys now has 149 signed franchise agreements without an opened outlet, roughly 69 openings projected for 2026, and a long-term target of 100 openings a year with AUVs approaching $3 million.
Why this matters beyond Zaxbys
The chicken category is the most crowded battleground in QSR. What separated Zaxbys wasn't a viral menu item — it was the willingness to measure operations honestly and fix them systematically. Speed of service wasn't a dashboard vanity metric; it was a lever pulled alongside procurement, prototypes, and training, and it showed up in franchisee P&Ls.
We're proud that Berry AI's vision technology is part of that toolkit. When QSR Magazine named Zaxbys its Transformational Brand of the Year, the drive-thru numbers were front and center — and those numbers only move when operators can see the whole picture.
Sources: QSR Magazine, "Zaxbys, Now Past 1,000 Locations, Gathers Growth Momentum" (July 6, 2026) and "The 2026 QSR 50" (August 3, 2026).
Want the same visibility into your drive-thru? Berry AI's camera timers measure the true end-to-end guest journey — no loop timers, no blind spots. Get in touch for a demo →
