Franchise brands don’t have a logo problem. They have a systems problem.
Most franchise operations treat brand like a one-time decision. Pick a logo, slap it on signage, move on. Then they scale to 50+ locations and wonder why nothing looks cohesive. Why every new market launch feels like starting over. Why the brand reads differently in Missouri than it does in Wisconsin.
Club Car Wash came to Riot mid-expansion. They weren’t a startup looking for an identity. They were a growing Midwestern car wash franchise with a clear mission and strong operations, but a brand system that couldn’t keep pace with their rollout. The problem wasn’t what the brand looked like. The problem was that nothing was built to scale.
The Work
We started with the logo — not to blow it up, but to make it work harder. The existing mark had recognition, but it lacked the flexibility a multi-location franchise demands. It needed lockup variations that performed across contexts: horizontal for building signage, stacked for print, monograms for social, square icons for digital profiles. One logo doing one thing is a deliverable. A logo system doing twenty things is infrastructure.
We explored multiple directions for each format. Horizontal lockups with adjusted type. Monogram options that could carry the brand at 32 pixels. Square icons that held up on a profile thumbnail and a storefront badge alike.
Then we built the typography system around it. Usual Extra Bold for headers. Usual Regular for body. Futura PT across supporting copy. Every weight, every use case, documented and specified…so location #47 doesn’t freelance a font choice because nobody told them not to.
Color got the same treatment. Club Car Wash Red, Rich Black, Cool Grey, Paper White, each with full CMYK, RGB, PMS, and hex specs. A defined color ratio to keep the palette from drifting. This sounds basic but it isn’t. Most franchise brands we audit have four versions of their “red” floating around because someone eyedropped a JPEG.
We codified the full graphic element library: location pins, branded hashtag lockups (#JoinTheClub), directional billboard templates, social media frameworks, color overlay techniques. Every piece designed to be deployed by someone who didn’t design it.
Why This Matters for Franchise
A franchise brand is only as strong as its worst location’s execution. That’s the math. You can have a beautiful brand at HQ and a disaster in the field if there’s no system governing the gap between intent and implementation.
What we built for Club Car Wash wasn’t a rebrand. It was brand infrastructure — the kind that lets a franchise open a new location and have it look right on day one without a designer in the room.
The logo refresh gave them a flexible identity system. The brand guidelines gave them a rulebook. Together, they gave every location, every vendor, every new hire the tools to execute the brand without interpretation. That’s what separates a franchise that looks like a franchise from one that looks like a chain of vaguely related businesses.
Scope
Logo system refresh: horizontal lockups, monograms, square icons, social profile applications
Brand guidelines: color system, typography hierarchy, logo usage rules and violations, graphic element library, signage templates, social media frameworks, overlay techniques
Riot builds brand systems for franchise and multi-location businesses. Not logos. Not one-offs. Systems that scale.
