FSC Franchise Co + Opus Training

Newk’s Eatery is one of the brands under FSC Franchise Co, and the whole organization runs on Opus.

Newk’s has served scratch-made soups, salads, sandwiches and pizzas with a hospitality-first reputation since 2004. The family-founded brand has grown to 96 locations, roughly 70% franchisee-operated, with 2,600+ team members.

The problem

A four-person L&D team had reached the limit of what they could run by hand. On their previous LMS, updating a course meant authoring it from scratch. Manager-in-training certification still ran through a three-inch paper binder, with tests scanned, emailed, and graded by hand. The team also had no real-time view of completion, making accountability across the network difficult.

“We had this huge three-inch binder, and all the testing was manual. I kept thinking, there has got to be a better way to do this,” said Jessica Drahem, Director of Performance, Development & Culture.

What they did

Over two and a half years, Newk’s built training infrastructure that runs across the whole network.

Digitized the MIT path: certification came out of the binder and became a digital training path, so every manager-in-training certifies through the same standard curriculum, trackable across the network.

Tied franchisee economics to engagement: franchises qualify for Regional Training Store status by achieving full Opus completion, which lets them certify managers locally instead of sending them to corporate for a six-week program, saving $12,000 to $15,000 per certification.

Connected guest feedback to training: through Opus’ Recommendations integration with Ovation, the L&D team spots recurring patterns in guest reviews, sends targeted training to the affected stores, and tracks whether complaints drop. Most training cycles run quarterly. Newk’s collapsed that to days.

The results

• 10% net drop in missing-item incidents after guest feedback surfaced a recurring order-accuracy issue.
• 88% engagement across 2,600+ team members, sustained over two years rather than spiking at launch.
• 22 corporate managers promoted from within over the past year, an estimated $103,000 in avoided recruiting costs.
• 211 managers certified locally by franchisees through Regional Training Stores, saving an estimated $1.2M.

“Opus has given me back time. Before, we’ve been focused on maintaining what we have. Now we’re able to think about what comes next.”