Firehouse Subs | Keboola Customer Stories

Industry:

Hospitality (QSR)

Size:

Enterprise

Region

U.S. & International

1,370+

Stores in 7 countries

$1.25B

Annual Sales

95%

Franchise-Owned

Exterior of Firehouse Subs restaurant with illuminated red and yellow sign and glass entrance displaying a welcome neon sign.

A Purpose-Driven QSR Brand Built on Flavour and Community

Firehouse Subs is a fast-growing, premium sandwich brand known for hearty, hot-crafted subs made with its signature steaming process. Founded in 1994 by two firefighter brothers, the brand has spent more than 30 years building a reputation for flavourful food and community impact, supported by its Public Safety Foundation that provides lifesaving equipment to first responders.

Now part of Restaurant Brands International, Firehouse Subs is entering its next chapter of growth—expanding into new markets, enhancing digital ordering, and innovating its menu—while staying true to the service-driven values that shaped the brand from the beginning.

Before Keboola

Challenges of a Rapidly Scaling Franchise

"We needed to empower franchisees with data to make better decisions for their businesses, which in turn would drive growth for the entire brand," says Danny Walsh, Vice President of Reporting & Analytics at Firehouse Subs.

Rapid Franchise Growth

Expanding from 300+ to over 1,000 locations introduced major complexity in managing financial and operational performance across the entire network.

Fragmented Data

Data spread across POS systems, customer feedback tools, and social media made it difficult to create a unified and accurate view of franchise performance.

Limited Franchisee Visibility

Franchise owners lacked consistent, easy-to-access insights to understand their performance and identify opportunities to improve sales and operations.

Lack of Actionable Insights

The corporate team couldn’t access timely, reliable KPIs, limiting their ability to drive performance, support franchisees, and guide strategic growth.

The Solution: Extensibility Over Rigidity

Firehouse Subs and Keboola created a unified analytics platform, connecting financial and operational data across the franchise. Now, corporate and franchisees have real-time performance visibility.

Unified Analytics Platform

Firehouse Subs partnered with Keboola to build Station Pulse—a unified analytics platform that connected POS, customer experience, call center, Yelp, and weather data into a single, real-time view by location. Both corporate and franchisees gained instant visibility into performance.

Centralized real-time insights that transformed decision-making across the entire franchise network.

dotted map of USA with a few connected dots

Embedded Scorecard

A simple scorecard inside Franconnect delivered 10 key metrics with regional and national benchmarking, giving franchisees clear, actionable insights.

Fast, Scalable Deployment

The platform was built in five months and created a scalable, governed data foundation that supports ongoing growth and innovation.

The Impact: A Data-Driven Franchise Transformation

By unifying financial and operational data, Firehouse Subs empowered corporate teams and franchise owners with real-time insights, improving alignment and performance.

"Working with Keboola changed how we work with our franchisees. By giving them access to data, we're empowering them to make decisions that are best for their businesses, which in turn are better for our business as a whole."

Danny Walsh, Vice President of Reporting & Analytics at Firehouse Subs

The Results

The new analytics foundation delivered measurable financial and operational improvements across the entire Firehouse Subs system. From increased revenue to faster growth and stronger organizational alignment, the impact was immediate and scalable.

Financial Impact

Firehouse Subs achieved an average annual ROI of $1.4M with payback in under three months. The franchise network also saw measurable revenue improvements across hundreds of locations.

Operational Performance

The platform accelerated systemwide growth 4× as the brand scaled from 300 to 1,200 restaurants. Employees gained the insights needed to work more efficiently and correct course faster.

Systemwide Alignment

Real-time data created a shared source of truth used by franchisees, managers, and executives alike. The solution earned industry recognition, winning the Hospitality Technology Breakthrough Award.

Universal Adoption Drives Productivity

Station Pulse achieved universal adoption across Firehouse Subs, with everyone from general managers to C-suite executives using the same dashboard. This created a common language for performance across the organization, leading to measurable increases in employee productivity through better operational insights and alignment on key metrics.

Universal Adoption Drives Productivity

A Unified Platform That Elevates Every Franchise

By consolidating financial, operational, and experience data into a single, real-time platform, Firehouse Subs brought clarity and alignment to its rapidly growing franchise network. Teams across all levels now operate from the same trusted insights, improving agility and decision-making.