Starbucks is planting a corporate flag in Nashville. In-N-Out is building an Eastern hub in nearby Franklin, Tennessee. And across the South, a long list of fast-food names — like Whataburger, Cava, and Jersey Mike’s — are expanding.
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From Texas to Florida, burgeoning and legacy fast-food companies are clustering their offices and growth bets in the region, chasing lower operating costs, easier hiring, and a customer base that’s clamoring for more options.
Recruiters and consultants who work across the restaurant industry say the move has been building for years, but is now accelerating.
“It’s the old adage of follow the money,” Mike Vigna, president at the recruiting firm RestaurantZone, told Business Insider.
A quieter shift south, years in the making
Post-pandemic population growth, suburban expansion, and new development are creating a new territory for chains to scale. As workers leave hubs like Silicon Valley and Seattle, restaurants follow — and so does the corporate infrastructure.
Whataburger is actively expanding across the region, with plans to open over 50 new locations in Georgia and 30 in Alabama by 2028. Jersey Mike’s is also growing rapidly in states like Florida and Texas as part of its plans to open between 400 and 450 stores this year.
Cava, Dave’s Hot Chicken, and smaller chains like Huey Magoo’s Chicken Tenders are following suit.
For franchise operators, the math can be stark.
“You could really be opening up two locations somewhere in the South for the same cost as it would be for one location out in California,” said Austin Titus, president of Accurate Franchising.
Wages and the cost of living also show “a dramatic difference” compared to the West Coast, Titus said, lowering the barrier to expansion and making it easier to operate profitably.
At the same time, the South offers another factor that’s just as important: clear signs of demand.
“It’s a relatively untapped market,” Ray Camillo, founder and CEO of Blue Orbit Restaurant Consulting, said of the Southeast, compared with more saturated coastal regions. He added that “there’s an awful lot of unmet demand” since chain expansion hasn’t kept pace with soaring population growth.
According to 2025 Census data, among counties with populations of 20,000 or more, nine of the top 10 fastest-growing counties were in the South, as were 45 of the top 50.
Why Nashville — and why now
Nashville and the broader Tennessee market have become a magnet thanks to a combination of business-friendly policies and a high quality of life, making relocation easier to sell to employees.
“There are a couple of things that make Tennessee attractive for employers and businesses,” said Melissa Montero, a recruiter at Goodwin Recruiting whose own family relocated to the state five years ago to follow her husband’s job.
She pointed to no state income tax and a “pro-business tax environment” as particularly compelling reasons for corporations to move. For workers, she said, it’s simply a better place to live.
“It’s a significantly easier place to live in so many ways,” Montero said, citing lower costs, quality schools, and strong infrastructure — factors that can help companies move talent without losing them.
Before the pandemic, companies often struggled to convince employees to leave major coastal hubs. Now, that dynamic has flipped.
“I don’t have anybody who wants to move to New York City or California,” Vigna said. “Everybody either wants to move out of there or move around in the South.”
Remote and hybrid work have accelerated that shift, widening the talent pool and making it easier to build teams outside traditional headquarters cities.
Not all employees are convinced of the benefits of moving South: Three Starbucks corporate staff members who spoke to Business Insider said the mood in their office was somber in the wake of the company’s announcement that it would open a satellite office in Nashville.
“It’s just confusing because last year the message was to be in the office in Seattle for office culture, and now they’ve introduced this new mini HQ,” one Starbucks corporate staff member said.
In July 2025, Starbucks required many remote employees to relocate to Seattle and return to the office four days a week or be fired, Business Insider previously reported. Company executives have said the Nashville location will support “in-office cultures across our geographic footprint.”
The economics of moving south
For fast-food chains — which operate on thin margins — the South’s cost structure is hard to ignore.
As other companies consider expansion, lower taxes, fewer regulations, and lower buildout costs all factor into their decisions. So do rising costs elsewhere.
Operators in higher-cost states are dealing with “higher regulation, higher policies, higher food costs, higher inflation,” said Matthew Rodgers, CEO of RestaurantZone. Moving or expanding south can help offset that pressure.
And once companies plant a flag, they tend to double down.
“They set up their hub, and then they start to really onboard and flesh out their corporate support teams,” Roberts said, adding that he has seen hiring demand in parts of the South jump as much as 50% or more in the past year.
That creates a feedback loop: more companies move in, more talent follows, and the region becomes more attractive for the next wave.
None of this means companies are abandoning places like Washington, where Starbucks remains headquartered, or In-N-Out’s California home.
“It’s not like a divestment,” Titus said. “There’s still a lot of business to be done in California.”
Instead, companies are shifting where they expand — and where they base operations — to balance costs and growth opportunities.
In other words, they’re spreading out.
“They’re going into regions where they’re following the population,” Vigna said. “It’s not a fad.”
That doesn’t mean every chain will move, or that every move will pay off, but the direction of travel is clear.
As Camillo put it, companies are looking at the region and asking a straightforward question: “Why not go ahead and pitch a tent here?”
For an industry built on thin margins and constant expansion, the answer is increasingly pointing south.
