BWW Go’s footprint grew by 60% in 2025. | Photo by Joe Guszkowski
Buffalo Wild Wings was a tale of two concepts in 2025.
There is the restaurant company’s core sports bar business, specializing in chicken wings, beer and televised sports, and then there is its scaled-down offshoot, Buffalo Wild Wings Go, with its small storefronts focused on takeout and delivery.
The newer, smaller brand grew much faster than the larger one last year, at least in terms of new store openings, as the company works to reach consumers who want to eat their wings at home.
Atlanta-based Buffalo Wild Wings finished 2025 with 1,178 sports bars, five fewer than the year before, according to a franchise disclosure document (FDD) filed last month. The decline came from corporate stores: The company closed 16 of them, while franchisees opened 11 locations.
Buffalo Wild Wings Go, meanwhile, exploded by nearly 60%, to 219 locations, from 140, per its FDD. Franchisees opened 104 new stores, while the company closed 11 corporate stores and sold 14 to franchisees. BWW Go grew particularly fast in Illinois, Texas and New York.
The two brands combined for total sales of $4.1 billion last year, according to data from Technomic, which does not break out each concept separately. That was an increase of just 1.2% from the year before, despite the significant unit growth for Buffalo Wild Wings Go.
And on a per-unit basis, sales at both brands were sluggish, FDD data shows.
The average franchised Buffalo Wild Wings sports bar generated about $3.6 million in 2025, up just 0.18% from the prior year.
And the average franchised BWW Go generated about $928,700. That was an approximately 5% decline from 2024, when the average location did $978,700, expressed in FDD data as about $19,000 per week.
The lower AUVs could be a natural result of the concept’s rapid expansion in recent years, though the figures don’t reflect the 92 franchised locations that opened in 2025 and were not operating for the full year.
Buffalo Wild Wings Go debuted in 2020 amid the pandemic-fueled takeout boom. It offers chicken wings and tenders with a choice of 26 sauces, as well as burgers, wraps, fried sides and desserts. A high proportion of its sales come through digital channels.
For franchisees, its smaller stores mean lower development costs and simpler operations, but with a well-known brand name on the sign. BWW Go also allows them to tap into the growing market for takeout wings led by the giant Wingstop. But Wingstop, too, saw AUVs decline last year, by 6.5%, according to Technomic.
BWW Go is one of the few full-service-to-quick-service spinoff concepts to gain traction. A number of casual-dining chains have launched similar offshoots over the years, including Red Robin, Outback Steakhouse and Hooters, but few were able to reach any sort of scale.
And despite the sales issues, Buffalo Wild Wings is moving full speed ahead with Go: It expects to add another 75 franchised locations this year, along with 16 franchised sports bars, per its FDD.
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