The Corner Bakery Cafe was founded in 1991 by Chicago’s Lettuce Entertain You Enterprise.  They began by supplying freshly baked bread to the customers that lived in their area.  Due to how much their customers loved the bread they made they evolved into a cafe that serves sandwiches as well.  This led to more menu items and in 1995 Brinker International purchased the company.  The company once again changed hands in 2006 when Il Fornaio and Bruckman, Rosser, Sherrill & Co. purchase the Corner Bakery Cafe.  In 2007 the brand started a very aggressive franchise strategy and it was purchase most recently by Roark Capital Group, which is an Atlanta based private equity firm.  They currently own this company, which has 119 locations in 13 states.

The menu is a bit different at each location, but they are well-known for their breads, pastries, gourmet sandwiches, breakfast dishes, and salads.  Since the company was founded on their very popular bread they are most known for the homemade bread that is baked daily in each cafe.  They are considered to be a fast casual restaurant and their items range from $0.99 to $7.99.  They do pride themselves on providing a much better atmosphere than a typical fast food restaurant and the food is known to be of a higher quality as well.

Corner Bakery Cafe is looking for individuals and groups that are capable of opening multiple franchise locations of their cafes in one market or in multiple markets.  They prefer that one of the partners or the franchisee lives in the market and is devoted to growing the brand locally.  They chard a $10,000 area development fee and a franchise fee of $25,000 for each location.  The royalty fee is 5% of the sales and there is a marketing production fee of 0.5% of sales as well.  They require that each franchisee spends at least 1.5% of their sales on local marketing.  They are not currently franchising outside of the United States, but may be in the future.