Where Kati Roll Is Growing

Kati Roll trades from seven stores today: four in Manhattan, two in Texas and one in New Jersey. Growth from here runs two ways. We want more stores in the states where we already trade, and we are researching six new metros, with the public figures for each below.

What we look for in a city

Our stores sit on walkable blocks, with people on them at lunch and through the evening. Local Profile noted in 2024 that our downtown Dallas store is popular with office workers and trades mainly in the daytime, while the first store, on MacDougal Street, trades until 3am on Friday and Saturday nights.

That is why the figures below describe districts, not whole regions: downtown job counts, pedestrian counts and campus enrollments. They come from public reports by downtown business groups, universities, city offices and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Closer to home

New York is where it started, on MacDougal Street in 2002; today there are also Midtown West, Midtown East and World Trade. Texas began our franchise program in 2024, when our first franchise partner opened Dallas on Elm Street in April and Plano on State Highway 121 in August. New Jersey followed in July 2026, when another franchise partner opened Journal Square on Bergen Avenue in Jersey City, a few minutes' walk from the PATH station.

Kati Roll in Texas tells how the first two franchise stores came together.

Six new metros we are researching

Nothing on this page offers a territory; territory is set only in a franchise agreement. Each is a metro we are studying, not a store in the works. Here is what the public data says about each one's downtown jobs, foot traffic and students.

Houston

Downtown Houston drew 37.4 million visits in 2024, according to Downtown Houston+, and Houston ranked No. 1 of 10 metros for returning to the office, citing CoStar. The University of Houston, on the edge of Midtown and Third Ward, enrolled 48,972 students in fall 2025.

Austin

The Downtown Austin Alliance counts 131,775 employees working downtown and more than 160,000 average daily visits, with workers, residents and visitors on the same blocks all day. The University of Texas at Austin, a mile from downtown, reported total enrollment of 55,000 in fall 2025.

Philadelphia

Greater Center City holds 309,000 jobs in one walkable core, and the Center City District counts more than 343,000 pedestrians there on a given day. Drexel University, with 20,868 students, sits in University City, minutes from Center City.

Boston

Boston's colleges enrolled 162,458 students in 2024, according to the City of Boston. Suffolk County, a small county that holds the downtown, Back Bay and Longwood office districts, counts 712,462 jobs, so weekday daytime traffic is concentrated in a few neighborhoods.

Washington, DC

Downtown DC held 204,000 jobs in 2025, according to the DowntownDC BID, out of 741,567 in the District as a whole. Offices, federal agencies and universities share the same walkable blocks.

Central New Jersey

Rutgers enrolled 46,934 students at New Brunswick in fall 2025, in the one dense downtown in Middlesex County. The county counts 431,665 jobs, with office parks, transit hubs and hospitals around Metropark and New Brunswick supplying weekday daytime traffic.

Where you want to open

Tell us where you want to open when you apply, and we talk it through on the introduction call. From there the path is the same five steps for every applicant: inquiry, introduction, application, discovery and agreement. From Inquiry to Opening walks through each one, and What It Takes to Own a Kati Roll sets out the five things we look for in a partner.

Where a store goes is a decision we make together. You choose the site with our guidance and we give final approval, with help on site selection, design and blueprints and lease negotiation along the way. Kati Roll Franchise Questions, Answered covers how territory is handled, and why we started franchising tells how the program began.

This post is not an offer to sell a franchise. An offer is made only by a Franchise Disclosure Document delivered in accordance with applicable law. The investment, the support and the path to an agreement are on our franchise page.