As I Heart Mac & Cheese owners allege fraudulent activity on the franchisor’s part, the company’s founders tout their up-and-coming new concept, Pilar Coffee Bar & Iced Treats.
“It feels apparent that they’ve abandoned I Heart Mac & Cheese, and the general consensus among the franchisees that I speak to feels the same,” said Cody Molyneaux, a former IHMAC franchisee in Utah who is suing the company for fraud. “I don’t think there’s anyone really running the ship, just the questionable individuals behind the scenes.”
Molyneaux has a suit against the brand with former franchisees Pratik Soni and Ben Bazar, who owned restaurants in Texas and California, respectively.
IHMAC is down to about 10 locations, compared to its peak of around 80. Despite a closure rate of more than 87 percent, IHMAC is selling Pilar and claiming it’s set to open hundreds of cafes in the next five years. The cost to invest ranges from $539,200 to $1.17 million, according to Pilar’s franchise disclosure document.
Pilar’s FDD, filed this year, lists eight cafes that were expected to open in 2025. Those projected stores—in Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island and Vermont—are franchised. The Pilar website lists one corporate store in Deerfield Beach, Florida, where IHMAC is based, while those eight locations are still marked as “coming soon.”
The cafe sells coffee and espresso-based drinks, plus ice cream, tea, juice, baked goods, breakfast and more.
In July, CEO and founder Steve Giordanella told Florida-based publication Today’s Restaurant News that he expects more than 220 Pilar cafes to open in the next five years.
“We are excited to expand into new markets and are actively seeking additional area developers across the U.S. to bring the unique experience to their communities,” Giordanella told the publication. (It’s worth stating that this article may have been a press release, as it has no author byline, though it’s not noted in the newspaper as such.)
He continued, “Our goal is to build a community of franchise partners who are as passionate about creating memorable experiences as we are.”
‘Just trying to make it work’
But as Pilar seems to be the new shiny toy for Giordanella, IHMAC’s current and former franchisees say they’ve been left behind. Representatives from Pilar and IHMAC didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Kyle Waters took out a Small Business Administration loan to open his IHMAC location in Hixson, Tennessee. He opened his restaurant with his brother, Kris, and wife, Rita, in July 2023, closed it in November 2024, filed for personal bankruptcy in January 2025 and lost his house this fall.
“We had that house for 13 years. It was the hardest thing that I had to go through,” Waters said. "We’ve moved in with my daughter, staying in their bottom apartment for now to try to figure out what our next steps are.”
The SBA loan cost him $10,000 a month. Even with $12,000 in weekly sales—which he said is “double the sales other stores were doing”—after payroll, food costs and other expenses, he was “just barely losing money.”
Waters tried to innovate to drive traffic. As a 40-year restaurant industry veteran, he rolled out flatbreads and loaded baked potatoes at his store. Potatoes are relatively inexpensive, and the toppings were already part of IHMAC’s macaroni and cheese menu, so it felt like a natural extension for the restaurant.
Rather than offer support to keep Waters’ business afloat, Vice President of Franchise Development Joe Amodio reportedly gave Waters the name of someone at We Sell Restaurants in Atlanta who could help sell his business.
“He sent me to his friend to try to sell a restaurant, but they knew that … nobody was going to touch that restaurant at all,” Waters said. “It’s kind of weird when your vice president is giving you names of people to try to sell your business instead of trying to help the business and help the concept.”
Throughout his IHMAC venture, Waters said he paid himself roughly $5,000.
“You know how hard it is coming to work every day knowing you’re not getting paid every week? … I wasn’t working for like five hours. I was working from early morning to late night, just trying to make it work,” Waters said.
One franchisee corroborated Waters’ claims that executives didn’t offer support.
“I know the franchise is totally focused on their new concept, Pilar, so they really don’t give a shit about this one,” said a franchisee. “They’re basically collecting an 8 percent fee right now for doing nothing.”
That franchisee, who needed to remain anonymous out of fear of legal repercussions, said they were required to spend at least $10,000 on the grand opening and hire 30 employees—the latter of which led him to “blow through a lot of payroll” in the first couple of months. The operator’s location is about 600 square feet too small to accommodate the number of customers who would want to sit inside to eat.
Sales are down 24 percent year over year. Customers were interested in the concept when it opened, but now the franchisee reports that customers think the meals are expensive, which is negatively affecting sales.
After about seven years, former IHMAC franchisee Genevieve Prieto’s lawsuit against the franchisor was settled August 19, according to court documents. Details of the settlement, which came as a result of mediation between both parties, are sealed.
Prieto’s store in Oklahoma was open for eight months. In that time, weekly sales dropped by 85 percent. Since closing, she’s spent about $50,000 on legal fees and lost about $1.7 million through her I Heart Mac & Cheese endeavor, she said earlier this year.
There are rumors of another franchise under the IHMAC umbrella called Cheese Lovers Kitchen, but the website and Facebook pages for it have been deleted. Former corporate procurement manager Nicolas Oppel listed the brand in his LinkedIn profile and at least one job-search website has job postings for Cheese Lovers in Florida.
Waters, the former Tennessee franchisee, said he considered a lawsuit against IHMAC, but ultimately couldn’t afford the legal fees associated with it.
“They caused a lot of havoc for my family. All I wanted to do was to be a business owner,” he said, getting choked up. “I’m a veteran. I wanted to just be that business owner that could do things for people and for vets. … Steve and that whole group of people who ran their business—they were unethical liars. I hope they get everything that’s coming to them.”