How a Waffle Became a 750 Store Franchise

By Tam Goldsmith

The Belgian Waffle Co. grew from one Mumbai kiosk to 750+ stores by keeping the franchise model small and simple.

The Belgian Waffle Co. started with one kiosk in Mumbai. A decade later, it has more than 750 stores across India. Behind that growth is a surprisingly simple franchise model.

When Shrey Aggarwal opened the first Belgian Waffle Co. kiosk in Mumbai in 2015, he was building a business around a product that most restaurants treated as a dessert.

That was part of the opportunity. Waffles were familiar enough to understand, but there was no large national chain in India built around them. Aggarwal and his team adapted the product for the local market, making the batter eggless and serving waffles with fillings as a handheld Waff-wich.

The format also meant customers did not need to sit down for a meal. Stores could be smaller, the preparation process could remain focused and the business did not require the kitchen of a conventional restaurant.

The Belgian Waffle Co. now says it has more than 750 stores across 240 cities. Franchising has played a major role in getting it there.

A Simple Product Made Expansion Easier

The early Belgian Waffle Co. menu had an advantage that becomes important when a restaurant starts opening stores quickly. Most of the business revolved around variations of the same core product.

A franchisee did not have to learn how to operate a kitchen producing burgers, fries, salads, desserts and dozens of ingredients. The waffle provided the base, while fillings and toppings gave customers choice without changing the operation every time.

The company has expanded its menu considerably since then, adding shakes, sundaes, cakes, coffee and other products. But the business was already well established before that expansion took place.

That order matters. Young restaurant brands are often tempted to add products because they want to appeal to more customers. Every addition can also bring another supplier, another preparation method, more stock and more training. Across a handful of company stores, that may be manageable. Across hundreds of franchise locations, small complications become much larger operating problems.

Belgian Waffle Co. established its network around a product that was relatively straightforward to teach and reproduce.

The Kiosk Was Part of the Franchise Model

The decision to start with a kiosk also had consequences for expansion.

Large restaurants need large sites, and those sites need enough sales to support the rent, fit out, equipment and staffing. A waffle business can work very differently.

Belgian Waffle Co. could open in compact retail spaces and kiosks, giving franchisees access to locations where a conventional restaurant would make little sense. That helped the company move into shopping centres, high streets and smaller markets without requiring the same investment as a full restaurant.

The company now offers different store formats and says a new franchise location can be launched in around 40 days, with support provided from site selection through to opening.

For a brand operating in more than 240 cities, that flexibility is important. Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru have very different property economics from smaller Indian cities. A franchise that can adjust its footprint has more opportunities to find a site where the numbers work.

Franchising Took the Brand Beyond Mumbai

The speed of the company's early expansion showed how well the format suited franchising. By 2018, only three years after the first kiosk opened, The Belgian Waffle Co. had passed 170 outlets across more than 40 cities.

Opening at that pace with company capital alone would have required a very different business. Franchisees brought local investment and knowledge of their markets, allowing the company to expand while concentrating its own resources on the product, brand, supply chain, training and support.

Rapid growth creates its own problems, of course. A waffle still has to taste the same whether it is bought in Mumbai or hundreds of kilometres away. Ingredients have to arrive on time, equipment has to work, staff have to be trained and franchisees have to follow the system.

This is where the simplicity of the original model starts to pay off. The fewer processes a store has to manage, the easier it becomes to maintain consistency as the network gets larger.

It does not guarantee a profitable franchise. Rent can still be too high, sales can disappoint and labor and food costs still need careful control. But a relatively simple store gives an operator fewer moving parts to manage.

Then Institutional Capital Arrived

By late 2025, Belgian Waffle Co. was a very different business from the kiosk Aggarwal had started a decade earlier.

Investment firm Vixar reportedly acquired a 45 percent stake for approximately ₹770 crore. The deal put a substantial value on a business that had spent its first decade turning a single food product into a national store network.

The investment is useful because it shows what had been created beyond the waffle itself. Belgian Waffle Co. had developed a recognised consumer brand, a large franchise network, a supply chain and an operating model that had been repeated hundreds of times.

That is ultimately where much of the value in a mature franchise sits. Customers may come for the product, but the business becomes valuable when that product can be sold consistently through hundreds of locations operated by different people.

There Is a Lesson in What It Did Not Build

The Belgian Waffle Co. story could easily be treated as another example of India's rapidly expanding consumer market. That would miss what makes it useful for franchisors.

The company did not begin by trying to build a conventional restaurant. It found a product people wanted, adapted it for Indian consumers and designed a small retail format around what was actually required to sell it.

Franchising then gave the company a way to repeat that format far beyond Mumbai.

The menu is larger today and the business is more complicated than it was in 2015. That is what happens when a company reaches hundreds of stores. The important point is that much of that complexity came after the basic model had already proved it could travel.

For emerging franchisors, there is something worth considering in that sequence. Growth does not always require adding more to a concept. Sometimes the better franchise is the business that asks franchisees to operate less.

What We Can Learn From This

Before expanding, franchisors should look closely at what a franchisee actually needs to open and operate the business. Space, equipment, staff, inventory and training all cost money, and every unnecessary requirement makes the next location harder to justify. The Belgian Waffle Co. grew quickly because its original format kept many of those demands relatively contained. As restaurant costs continue to rise, concepts that can generate enough sales from smaller spaces and simpler operations will have more places where they can realistically grow.

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