After Difficult Year, Red Door Brands Sets Stage for Comeback

After Difficult Year, Red Door Brands Sets Stage for Comeback

Ben Coley

Fri, September 4, 2026 at 11:29 PM GMT+3 6 min read

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It's a Tuesday afternoon, and Kayla Edidin is sitting outside of an Arby's in Texas. For the first time in years, she isn't selling franchises; she owns them, as the new chief operating officer and majority partner of Red Door Brands with a 60 percent stake in the company and all its subsidiaries.

Red Door Brands is a Knoxville-based, multi-brand portfolio company that operates nearly 20 franchised restaurants, including McAlister's Deli, Little Caesars, Arby's, and Main Squeeze Juice Co. across North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. Edidin came on board in March 2026 to work alongside Argus Wiley, founder and CEO.

For Edidin, the role represents a long-held wish being answered. After 20 years of operations experience as both a franchisor and franchisee, she moved into franchise development with Huddle House in 2018. She stayed on through Huddle House's acquisition by Ascent Hospitality Management, which later also acquired Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, and went on to hold multiple roles leading franchise operations and development across the Ascent portfolio through 2025.

"In my heart, I'm an entrepreneur, so this scratches an itch that's been on my vision board forever. It's been great to be connected to the soul of the restaurant again, the people who run it, and the communities we serve," Edidin says. "I love the opportunities we're going to create within Red Door Brands. I've had some exciting roles, but shifting into an equity role within the company is a lot more fulfilling than just selling franchises."

By all accounts, Edidin was leaving a rocket ship—Mike's Red Tacos, where she'd sold more than 200 franchises for the emerging brand in its first year as vice president of franchise development. But she believed Red Door Brands could be one, too.

2025 was a difficult year for Red Door Brands. Matadoor Restaurant Group, a Red Door affiliate operating 22 Del Taco locations across Georgia and Alabama, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid mounting financial pressure. The filing has allowed Matadoor to continue operating while restructuring its finances, and Red Door has used the past year to streamline operations and refocus on long-term performance heading into 2026.

Edidin represents a new era of stability for Red Door Brands, bringing a focus on operational excellence, system standardization, strategic expansion, and a goal to attract new capital partners and scale the portfolio to more than 100 units by 2028.

Above all, she hopes to rebuild, little by little, trust and motivation among employees who've felt the impact of a hard year. She sees herself in them—this industry gave her opportunities she never would have had otherwise, like completing not just her undergrad but also an executive MBA program.

"I'm big on mindset. It's been a tough season for Red Door, but we're going to be better than we were yesterday. They may have lost their way a little bit, but we're going to elevate our standards and lean back on the core fundamentals that made us successful in the past," Edidin says. "This is a breath of fresh air for the company. There's less uncertainty around the future vision of how people can grow and build a life with us."

Edidin believes nobody becomes excellent on the easy path. Every aspect of Red Door Brands has been evaluated and refined, and that tough season has forced the company to ask the hard questions and pinpoint what it really needs to thrive.

Number one on her to-do list is to bring in strong leadership and structure at the store level to guide and hold the team accountable in a positive way. Store-level managers are being elevated, and district managers are being hired to provide an added layer of support and sharpen employee skill sets.

The next big piece of strategy is to leverage Red Door Brands as an operations company, providing operations services to other franchisees that have portfolios that need above-store support, from cost control to field leadership and brand execution. The infrastructure is already in place, and there are a few portfolios ready to be onboarded.

"There's a big void in the marketplace for those who don't want to sell their investments but want more of a hands-off approach, and what they need are people who know how to run a restaurant," Edidin says. "And that's exactly who we are. We run restaurants, and our next big vision and strategy is to grow the operations portion of our business."

In this first year at Red Door Brands, success for Edidin is simple: to have everyone in the company know, feel and live the mission statement: to do as much as we can in the place that we are with the time that we have.

Edidin understands that the frontline teams have had several leaders in the past few years. They have weathered a lot of changes. But she is here to build that trust and act on what she says, over and over again. It's the reason why she owns a majority stake in the company but kept her title as chief operating officer. It's non-traditional from a role standpoint, but through establishing this stability, she is building trust.

"Nobody has to wonder what Kayla is thinking, and I expect that level of candor and directness from the team. And this honesty will build what I'm looking for … it's important for them to know where my heart is," Edidin says. "It's my job to make them feel respected and supported. I don't do things I say I won't do, and I don't promise things I can't do."

Two years ago, Edidin wanted to own restaurants, but she didn't see how it was possible. She told herself it was not in the cards, that she couldn't figure out a way to accomplish it. But here she is, rising to the occasion and breaking through her own limiting beliefs. She says it would have been easy for her to stay in her previous role. It was safe, it was successful. But it wasn't what her heart wanted.

"Don't limit yourself and be open to opportunities around you. I had limiting dialogues with myself, but I was brave enough to push past them and follow what my heart was telling me to do," Edidin says. "It's not always the safe and easy choice. I wanted to build something beautiful and my own."

The post After Difficult Year, Red Door Brands Sets Stage for Comeback appeared first on QSR Magazine.