Julie Fussner, who's been with Culver's since 2017 and was its chief marketing officer, took over as CEO in late April.
Julie Fussner, just the fifth CEO in the 41-year history of Culver’s, is focusing on in-restaurant training, traffic growth, unit-level execution and restaurant profitability as she begins her tenure at the Wisconsin-based burger brand.
To Julie Fussner, the success of Culver’s comes back to its owner-operators.
“It’s all driven by the fact that we require our owner-operators to be present and engaged,” said Fussner. “You can't just come into Culver’s with a bunch of money and open a bunch of restaurants.”
Fussner, named CEO of the Wisconsin-based burger and custard brand in late April after Rick Silva retired in February, said there’s no substitute for having active operators in the restaurants. And yes, it’s a requirement in the franchise agreement: Individual franchisees must personally manage their restaurant; multi-unit franchisees, depending on the arrangement, must have one person with at least a 50 percent or 25 percent ownership stake who operates each restaurant.
“There’s no big secret,” Fussner continued, and not straying from a foundation of intense focus on hospitality and execution means Culver’s can keep doing well “despite whatever’s happening in the industry.”
While other major fast-food burger franchises are grappling with declining sales—McDonald’s domestic sales were flat last year and the company just announced U.S. same-store sales shrank 3.6 percent during the first quarter—Culver’s grew system sales 16 percent in 2024. And its average unit volume hit $3.79 million, up from $3.48 million in 2023.
In each of the last five years Culver’s added 50 or more units, and earlier this year it hit 1,000 locations. The total by early May, said Fussner, was 1,015.
Maybe there’s no secret, but that doesn’t mean sustained growth comes easy for the 41-year-old brand.
Related: How Its Wisconsin Roots Help Culver’s Churn Out Sales
Fussner, who before taking the helm as CEO (she’s just the fifth CEO in the brand’s history) was the company’s first-ever chief marketing officer, joined the marketing team in 2017. She and her team helped Culver’s evolve its messaging—it had been drawing on its “Welcome to delicious” tagline for about a decade—and harness the power of its roots with the ongoing “From Wisconsin With Love” campaign.
She brought in a new agency, Hearts & Science, to help better navigate the digital marketing landscape and boost the efficiency of the brand’s media spend.
“The reason this is so significant, obviously, is we are spending our operators’ money. The only reason we have an ad fund is because of what we collect from our franchisees, and so we are incredibly conscientious of how we spend their money,” she said. Digital media, she continued, accounts for more than half of the brand’s budget, so a more sophisticated approach “made an immediate impact in the return on investment of media dollars.”
Culver’s more recently rebuilt its website for online ordering, rolled out third-party delivery across the system and later this year will launch its loyalty program. It created a digital experience team headed by Dan Cardamone, who Fussner noted is a “brilliant tech leader.”
Culver's, which this year crossed the 1,000-unit threshold, is known for its ButterBurgers and cheese curds.
Fussner’s four buckets
As she steps into the chief executive role, Fussner said her focus is on advancing the system priorities identified by the leadership team last fall.
Serving the restaurant teams. “Our big focus there is how we better train our teams. We know that we can modernize our training, and now we're also doing more field-based training,” she said, with training taking place in the restaurants versus having owners and managers travel to the company’s headquarters in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin.
Growing sales and experiences, aka traffic. “That's really all around the marketing efforts,” said Fussner, and includes limited-time offers, spring, summer and back-to-school campaigns, the loyalty program and menu innovation. Culver’s in June will launch its “renovated” line of chicken sandwiches, which Fussner said have been completely rebuilt and feature brioche buns, premium chicken and better breading.
Optimized restaurant-level execution. “This is where I think we have the most opportunity across the system, and especially as we grow,” she said, because the larger the system, the harder it can be to deliver a consistent experience. A primary focus now is the drive-thru experience “and really how we get better as it relates to speed and accuracy.”
“We are a slow fast-food brand based on how we prepare the food, and we're sort of proud of that, but you can't be too slow, obviously,” she continued. “So our field team is working really hard with operators on speed and accuracy in the drive-thru.”
All new restaurants, she added, are being built with double drive-thrus.
Driving restaurant profitability. “We are slightly different than some of our competitors, in that even as a franchisor, we're not necessarily just concerned about the sales at our restaurants. We are really concerned that our operators feel like this was a really good investment for them, and they get a really good return on their money,” said Fussner. “So, we're always looking at ways to either simplify operations or take costs out of the distribution system and supply chain.”
Those efforts, she emphasized, never come at the expense of quality.
Culver’s in February brought on Christie Hughes as its senior vice president of design, development and construction. Hughes, who was the SVP of development for large Yum Brands franchisee KBP Brands, is already identifying opportunities to reduce buildout costs, said Fussner.
The cost to open a Culver’s restaurant, typically a freestanding building at about 4,000 square feet to accommodate a dining room, ranges from $2.6 million to $8.5 million.
Even as dine-in orders account for about 30 percent of sales (drive-thru is about 55 percent and the remaining is delivery/takeout), Fussner said Culver’s isn’t looking to reduce the size of its restaurants or dining rooms.
“A lot of places have walked away from that part of the experience, and frankly, a lot of places and communities have walked away from having places for people to gather. We haven't. We've doubled down on that,” she said. “We really encourage people to come after the high school football game or whatever, and gather in our restaurants and have that place where they feel welcome and they can belong.”