The Burger Joint That Borrowed Ford's Blue Oval - and Kept Driving
A burger joint that talked Ford Motor Company into lending out the Blue Oval - and is now franchising its 1920s garage across the country, one copper bar and branded bun at a time.
In 2012, two Florida restaurateurs opened a burger-and-beer joint in Fort Myers, less than a mile from the winter estate where Henry Ford once tinkered away from Detroit. They named it Ford's Garage and dressed the room like a 1920s service station: classic Fords hanging from the rafters, gas pumps by the door, a copper bar top hammered by hand. Then the Ford Motor Company came calling - not to congratulate them, but to challenge the name.
What happened next is the whole story of the brand. Rather than shut it down, Ford eventually did the opposite. In 2014 the automaker signed a licensing agreement letting the restaurant use the Ford name and the famous "Blue Oval" logo across its dining rooms. A themed burger spot had turned a trademark fight into one of the rarest assets in casual dining: permission to wrap itself in an American icon. More than a decade later, Ford's Garage runs about 32 restaurants across eight states and is signing franchise deals to push into new markets.
What it isA service station you can eat inside
Ford's Garage calls itself a "burger and brew joint," but that undersells the set design. Each location is built to feel like a working 1920s garage. Vintage Ford vehicles and memorabilia fill the rooms. The bar tops are hand-hammered copper. Staff work in nostalgic auto-shop uniforms. The napkins are not napkins at all - they are blue mechanic's shop towels. Even the food plays along: the half-pound Black Angus burgers arrive on artisan buns branded with the Ford's Garage logo.
None of these details are expensive on their own. Taken together, they are the product. In a category where a burger is a burger, Ford's Garage sells a specific, ownable feeling - one guests photograph and remember - and it repeats that feeling, down to the plate, in every new dining room it builds.
Two restaurateurs and a very good idea
The concept came from Mike McGuigan, of McGuigan Restaurant Concepts, and Daniel Kearns, of the Kearns Restaurant Group, with Kearns' son Zachary involved from the start. Their insight was small and specific: Fort Myers sits beside Henry Ford's winter estate, so a Ford-themed room there would feel local rather than gimmicky. That single geographic fact is the seed the whole brand grew from, and it explains why the company still chooses its locations like it is telling a story.
Today the restaurants are operated by 23 Restaurant Services under the Icon Restaurant Group, the group steering the shift from a founder-run Florida original into a franchised national system. The corporate base is in Tampa, where the leadership team - including chief marketing officer Kathleen Bush - runs brand, development and the franchise pipeline that is now doing the heavy lifting on growth.
The menuHalf a pound of Black Angus, and a copper bar
The core of the menu is straightforward American comfort food. Freshly made half-pound Black Angus burgers come with aged cheeses, fresh toppings and house sauces; a housemade veggie burger covers the non-meat table. Around the burgers sit appetizers, soups, mac and cheese, sandwiches, milkshakes and desserts. The bar runs a rotating craft-beer program alongside cocktails, poured at those signature copper counters.
Repeat visits are nudged by MotorClub, the loyalty program that hands members perks like a free birthday appetizer. It is a small mechanism, but it fits the brand's whole thesis - that the reason to come back is the experience and the people, not just the patty.
"We are in the hospitality business and part of the experience is spending time with our guest and getting to know them."
- Dave Ragosa, VP of Franchising and DevelopmentFrom one town to eight states
Ford's Garage grows the way its story is written - through geography that means something. The first restaurant landed in Fort Myers because that is where Henry Ford wintered. The first location outside Florida, in 2017, opened in Dearborn, Michigan - Ford's birthplace and the automaker's home. In 2024 the brand crossed into New York for the first time at the Smith Haven Mall on Long Island. Every pin on the map ties back to the Ford narrative, and that discipline turns real estate into marketing.
The pace is picking up. In 2025 the company named Billy Downs its president, signed a three-unit deal to enter New Jersey for the first time - with a Middlesex County restaurant targeted for early 2026 - and inked a development agreement to bring three locations to Houston, deepening its Texas footprint. Executives have said the brand is even weighing international expansion.
Business modelSell the burger, franchise the feeling
On the surface, Ford's Garage makes money the ordinary way: dine-in food and beverage, with the bar program lifting the average check. Underneath, the growth engine is franchising. The company - operated by 23 Restaurant Services under the Icon Restaurant Group umbrella - sells and supports multi-unit franchise territories while running corporate-owned restaurants of its own. The Ford license, the themed build-out and the loyalty program are the repeatable package a franchisee is buying into. Reported revenue runs around $135 million a year, with roughly 800 employees across the system.
"We're confident that once guests try Ford's Garage, they'll notice the focus we put on hospitality, the overall experience, and the quality of our food."
- Dave RagosaBetting on people while rivals test robots
In the summer of 2025, when Tesla opened a Hollywood diner staffed by roller-skating servers and Optimus robots, a Ford's Garage executive was blunt: robots serving popcorn, he said, lack a personal touch. The comment doubled as a mission statement. Ford's Garage is wagering that in an industry drifting toward automation and ghost kitchens, a room full of real servers, vintage cars and comfort food is the differentiator - not the fallback.
That puts it in a crowded field. It competes with beer-and-burger gastropubs like Yard House, BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse, Twin Peaks and Hopdoddy, and with the wider better-burger set for the same casual American dinner. What Ford's Garage owns that they do not is the Blue Oval and a fully committed backstory. In a sea of interchangeable burger rooms, a licensed identity and a 1920s garage are hard to copy.
How it got hereThe timeline
The market position
Ford's Garage sits in the sweet spot between a national chain and a one-off theme restaurant. It is big enough to franchise and standardize, small enough to feel like a find. Its customers are families, casual diners, craft-beer drinkers and - naturally - classic-car and Ford enthusiasts. The brand's ceiling is tied to how far the theme travels: a concept this specific has to prove it lands in New Jersey and Houston the way it does in Fort Myers. So far, the map keeps growing, and the story keeps doing the work that a marketing budget usually has to.
There is a reason the licensing detail matters so much here. Brands guard their logos fiercely, and the Ford Blue Oval is one of the most recognized marks in the world. For a mid-market restaurant to be trusted with it - after an initial dispute, no less - is a form of credibility that no advertising campaign can buy. Every guest who walks in reads the logo on the wall as a quiet endorsement, and every franchisee who signs on is buying into that borrowed trust.
The lesson underneath is portable, whether you run a restaurant or not: a distinctive, fully executed identity can be a cheaper, stickier moat than scale. Ford's Garage could not out-spend the big chains, so it out-specified them - and then talked Detroit into co-signing the whole thing. Whether that formula survives the jump to a dozen new markets is the open question of the next few years. The map, for now, keeps filling in.