How A&W’s new CEO Betsy Schmandt is modernizing a 105-year-old brandHow A&W’s new CEO Betsy Schmandt is modernizing a 105-year-old brand

A&W Restaurants Inc. is one of the oldest fast-food chains in America, but new CEO Betsy Schmandt believes that even a 105-year-old brand can evolve. She calls it “newstalgia:” a strategy that modernizes A&W’s tech, operations, and marketing while staying true to its classic, all-American root beer float roots.

Schmandt was promoted to CEO of the Lexington, Ky.-based quick-service chain at the beginning of March after serving as president of A&W since 2023. Before that, she held multiple leadership positions at Mrs. Fields Famous Brands and Godiva Chocolatier. Schmandt sees a lot of similarities between Mrs. Fields and A&W, with both brands associated with familiar comfort and sweet treats.

“Everybody has an A&W memory and some of those memories are 60 years old and people are now sharing the brand with their grandchildren,” Schmandt said. “We have restaurants that have been continuously operating for 90 years. … We’re  trying to honor that heritage that these franchisees have had in their families for so long, but also move them toward a more consistent brand identity: a similar menu, infrastructure, and POS system.”

A&W began a new point-of-sale-system rollout two years ago in partnership with PAR POS, and the process of tech stack modernization is still ongoing. On top of that, A&W is working with Olo for online ordering, has added kiosks, and is working on tableside ordering that lets customers skip the line and order at the table via a QR code.

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“We are building this infrastructure and rolling it out across the whole system over the next few years, which will allow us to unlock more marketing opportunities through loyalty and gift cards, and ultimately help us understand our customers better, inspire them to come to the restaurants more often, and help our operators build their businesses,” Schmandt said.

Besides the behind-the-scenes changes at work with the tech stack evolution, Schmandt and her team are hard at work appealing to younger generations by upgrading A&W’s digital marketing efforts, focused particularly on social media. The key, she said, is to tell the story of the A&W brand by using these modern branding techniques and not changing the brand to fit into the foodservice trends of today.

“Because we are a 105-year-old brand, we have so many customers who remember the drive-in and have that nostalgia, but we have plenty of younger people who aren’t as familiar with the brand,” Schmandt said. “We think about this intersection of the nostalgia as ‘newstalgia,’ and how do we blend those two ideas? I think some of our younger and newer customers don't crave the simplicity of what we have to offer and just enjoy a real quality experience.”

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Besides marketing modernization, Schmandt has her eye on development growth for A&W, particularly in the Midwest, in areas like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan where the A&W brand is already very strong.

“There are so many pockets where A&W has been in the past, and there is this latent love for the brand in so many of these small towns,” Schmandt said. “It's a comfortable environment, and we're really excited about the opportunity to build out that experience across the country.”

Contact Joanna at [email protected]