Zaxby’s has opened its first Florida Turnpike franchise restaurant and signed what it calls its largest non-traditional franchise development agreement to date. The partnership with travel concession operator Areas USA covers five service plaza locations along Florida’s Turnpike, with the first site open at Turkey Lake Service Plaza in Orlando. The chicken chain, now past the 1,000-location milestone, is using the deal as a blueprint for future expansion into airports, college campuses, and military bases.
Zaxby’s surpassed 1,000 restaurants nationwide earlier in 2026 and has set a target of more than 60 new openings for the year. The franchise brand, known primarily for its freestanding locations across the Southeast and Sun Belt, has been actively exploring non-traditional venues as part of its next growth phase.
The agreement with Areas USA, a travel concession company that operates food and retail services at airports and highway service plazas, represents the largest single development deal the chain has executed outside its traditional restaurant format. The first location, at Turkey Lake Service Plaza in Orlando at Milepost 263 on Florida’s Turnpike, opened on September 29, 2026.
Zaxbys
Real Good Food. Made Fresh
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- Liquid capital: $750000
Five Turnpike Locations and the Brand’s Largest Non-Traditional Deal
The multi-unit agreement between Zaxby’s and Areas USA calls for five restaurants at Florida Turnpike service plazas, with Turkey Lake in Orlando as the first to open. The Florida Turnpike carries millions of travelers annually through its network of service plazas, which offer a captive consumer base for food and retail tenants.
For Zaxby’s, the deal is notable for both its scale and its structure: it is the brand’s largest development agreement for locations outside the freestanding restaurant format it has used since its founding. The company cited the partnership as evidence that its flexible restaurant formats can operate efficiently in venue types beyond the traditional suburban or strip-center location.
A New Flexible Format Strategy Behind the Expansion
Zaxby’s has been developing what it calls a “Modern Farmhouse” design system that includes six flexible restaurant prototypes, built to adapt to different footprints and venue types. The arrangement with Areas USA draws on those prototypes to fit the physical constraints of travel plaza environments, where square footage and kitchen configurations differ significantly from a freestanding building on a commercial corridor.
Richard Schneider, Chief Development Officer of Areas USA, described the brand fit: “With its bold flavors and Southern hospitality, Zaxbys is a great fit for these plazas.” The Florida Turnpike deal is intended to validate the approach at scale before the brand applies the model to other venue categories.
Airports, College Campuses, and Military Bases Are Next
Zaxby’s has identified airports, college and university campuses, and military installations as the next categories in its non-traditional venue pipeline. Each represents a defined consumer environment with consistent daily traffic and limited on-site competition. For a chicken chain that has historically concentrated its development along the I-85 corridor and into the Sun Belt, non-traditional real estate marks a shift toward denser and more varied consumer touchpoints.
The brand has stated that its flexible prototype lineup is designed to support this kind of venue diversification, offering configurations suited to both high-volume transit environments and smaller captive-audience settings. The Turkey Lake opening, reported by QSR Magazine, is the first observable data point in what the company describes as a broader non-traditional growth strategy.
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