Freshii Brand Guidelines: Toronto’s 2005 Lettuce Eatery, a 2017 Listing and Foodtastic

A Toronto salad counter that became a franchise.

Freshii began in Toronto in 2005. English Wikipedia says the first shop opened in September 2005 under the name Lettuce Eatery, and that its founder, Matthew Corrin, had been working for the fashion designer Oscar de la Renta in New York when the city’s delis, with their counters of fresh food made to order, gave him the idea. The same account says the shop opened to queues and ran out of food before the end of lunch on its first day.

The company’s own pages still tell the story in one line: Freshii says its “Toronto-based brand was born” in 2005. The name has a doubled i, and the company carries that letter into its own copy, writing words such as “ONLiiNE” on its ordering buttons, and it often sets the brand name in lower case in running text.

Growth came through franchising rather than company-run shops. English Wikipedia records that in 2016 Freshii was opening an average of 3.5 new stores a week and had reached 220 stores in 20 countries, with Colombia serving as its base in Latin America, and names Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama among the countries where restaurants were opening. It adds that the Latin American restaurants kept the same core menu as those in North America and Europe while adding some local ingredients. The chain has also been listed by English Wikipedia in Canada, the United States, Colombia, Peru, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and the United Arab Emirates.

Bowls, wraps and a menu built to be customised.

Freshii describes itself as a quick service restaurant brand, and its menu is organised by format rather than by named dishes. On its website in 2026 the menu runs through bowls, poke bowls, salads and smoothies, alongside wraps, burritos, soups and breakfast, and the company says customisation is part of the visit. The same site promotes a Freshii app with a loyalty programme and a store finder, and it still recruits franchisees through a “Become a Franchisee” page. English Wikipedia describes the chain more plainly as a fast casual franchise that serves burritos, wraps, soups, salads and frozen yogurt.

The brand also moved beyond its own counters. English Wikipedia says Freshii introduced meal boxes at most locations in 2016. By the time of its sale, the company had built a packaged-goods line of its own; Restaurant Business reported in December 2022 that Freshii had recently bought an online retailer and had focused more on that consumer packaged goods business.

Freshii became a public company in Toronto. Restaurant Business dates its initial public offering to 2017, and English Wikipedia says the shares began trading in February 2017 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The listed years were difficult. Restaurant Business wrote in December 2022 that the chain had struggled since the offering, with slowing unit growth even before workday lunch trade in city centres fell away in 2020, and Nation’s Restaurant News noted the same month that Freshii had closed dozens of restaurants over the previous two years. English Wikipedia records 343 stores in North America at the end of December 2021.

In May 2022 Corrin stepped down as chief executive, according to English Wikipedia, and the chief financial officer, Daniel Haroun, took the role.

Design and documentation.

Canada’s home-grown restaurant chains grew up alongside the American franchises that crossed the border, and many still introduce themselves by where they began. Harvey’s dates its first restaurant to Richmond Hill, Ontario, in 1959; Mary Brown’s traces its first to St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, in 1969. Their corporate and franchising pages tell those founding stories, name founders and owners, and describe their franchise networks in their own words.

The chains in this group cover burgers, fried and rotisserie chicken, subs, pizza, juice, salads, Thai dishes and burritos. On their own websites they present themselves through shopfronts, signage, packaging and a handful of named dishes, such as a lead burger or a chicken sandwich, repeated across their restaurants. In Quebec, names and menus appear in French, written as the companies write them.

Ownership is often grouped. Several of these brands belong to larger restaurant companies that run many chains at once: Recipe Unlimited, taken private by Fairfax Financial in October 2022, lists Harvey’s, Swiss Chalet and St-Hubert among its brands, according to the law firm Torys, and Mary Brown’s parent, MBI Brands, bought a Toronto burrito chain in 2022, The Telegram reported. Some restaurants share a building with a sibling brand, as some Harvey’s and Swiss Chalet locations do.

Some of these chains also trade abroad, at times under a shorter name, as Mary Brown’s does with MB Chicken. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it and how many restaurants a dated source gives it. It marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word, and its palettes and typefaces are our own interpretation, not the brands’ official ones.

From a listed company to a Foodtastic brand.

Freshii’s years as a listed company ended in 2023. On 19 December 2022, Restaurant Business and Restaurant Dive reported that Freshii had agreed to be bought by Foodtastic, a privately held, Montreal-based franchisor of several restaurant brands. Restaurant Dive named Pita Pit, Second Cup and Milestones among Foodtastic’s brands and noted that Freshii then had at least 37 restaurants in the United States. Restaurant Business added that Corrin, who held more than 69 percent of the voting shares, had agreed to support the deal.

The sale closed on 22 February 2023. Restaurant Business reported that day that Freshii had become a subsidiary of Foodtastic and that franchisees operated all of the chain’s roughly 340 locations; English Wikipedia gives the same completion date and lists Foodtastic as the parent from 2023. Freshii’s own site, as of 2026, says the brand has more than 300 locations around the world and still invites new franchisees.

The Freshii purchase was one of two that month. Restaurant Dive reported that Foodtastic had announced on 2 December 2022 a deal for Quesada, a Canadian burrito chain with around 175 units, and that Freshii itself had a development pipeline of about 125 units when the sale was agreed. Nation’s Restaurant News paired the Freshii deal with another fast-casual sale that week and described Foodtastic as a restaurant franchisor buying a struggling Canadian fast-casual chain. The deal required shareholder and court approval, Restaurant Dive noted, and Restaurant Business later reported that Freshii shareholders had approved it.

For a design guide, Freshii shows how a single invented spelling can carry an identity: the doubled i in the name returns in the company’s own copy. Compare the juice chain in the Booster Juice brand guidelines and the burrito chain in the Mucho Burrito brand guidelines. For this guide we use basil green, forest ink, avocado and lime cream with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Freshii’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.