Exhibitors

Kaia Bowls 

Who We Are

Kaia Bowls is a fast-casual superfood concept built on a simple idea: real fruit, real flavor, real care. From a single shop on Florida's Gulf Coast, we've grown into a franchise system that serves freshly crafted açaí bowls, pitaya bowls, poke bowls, and smoothies to guests who want food that tastes indulgent and actually feels good to eat. Our menu is built on four premium bases — açaí, pitaya, coconut, and mango — alongside our own proprietary homebases, made from pure, real fruit with no water, no dairy, and no added sugar. That's not a marketing line; it's the foundation of the brand.

Headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, Kaia Bowls operates with a clear point of view: superfoods shouldn't be a compromise, hospitality shouldn't be transactional, and a great QSR concept shouldn't require a complicated kitchen. We've engineered every part of the business — menu, operations, footprint, and franchisee experience — around those beliefs.

Origin Story

Kaia Bowls was founded in March 2022 by husband-and-wife team Cristina and Marc, who came to the restaurant industry from a long career in travel and tourism. That background matters. After years of building experiences for travelers — understanding what makes people feel welcomed, taken care of, and eager to come back — they saw the same hospitality principles missing from most fast-casual concepts. Bowls were trending, but the category felt impersonal: thin product, watered-down bases, packed sugar, and forgettable service.

The founders set out to build the opposite. They formulated their own bases from whole fruit so the product could speak for itself. They designed a menu that was approachable enough for first-timers and credible enough for the superfood-savvy. And they built a brand culture rooted in genuine care — for guests, for franchise partners, and for the team members behind the counter. Kaia Bowls opened its doors in Clearwater and began growing from there.

What We Serve

The Kaia menu is intentionally focused. Three signature categories, all built on the same standard — real fruit, real ingredients, real care.

Signature Bowls — Our anchor product. Every bowl starts with one of our four premium bases — açaí, pitaya, coconut, or mango — or one of our proprietary homebases, made from pure, real fruit with no water, no dairy, and no added sugar. From there, every bowl is layered with our gluten-free blueberry flax granola, the guest's choice of sauce (Nutella, peanut butter, white chocolate, and more), and freshly cut fruit. Prefer to design your own? Guests can also build their own bowl — mixing bases, granolas, sauces, and toppings to make it exactly their own.

Poke Bowls — Our savory side, designed as a complete, healthy meal. Choose your protein: wild-caught tuna, premium salmon, grilled chicken, shrimp, or one of our vegan alternatives. Served over jasmine rice with freshly cut vegetables and house sauces, every poke bowl is a clean, satisfying lunch or dinner that doesn't trade flavor for nutrition.

Smoothies — Real fruit blended with plant-based milk, made to order. Add your favorite protein or collagen for the perfect blend — a meal replacement, a post-workout fuel-up, or a clean afternoon pick-me-up.

Across the menu, two trends converge in every Kaia order. Superfoods drove the first wave of better-for-you eating; protein is driving the second. Most bowl concepts pick one. Kaia delivers both — clean, whole-fruit bases and homebases on one side, and high-quality protein in our poke bowls and as an add-in to our smoothies on the other. What guests notice first is texture and taste. What they notice second is what's not there: no dairy in our bases, no water padding out the product, no added sugar masking thin formulas.

Premium Bases & Our Proprietary Homebases

Kaia Bowls features four premium bases — açaí, pitaya, coconut, and mango — sourced and prepared to a quality standard most concepts won't match. Beyond those, we developed our own homebases: proprietary formulas crafted from pure, real fruit, with no water, no dairy, and no added sugar. The homebases complete our menu and round out the experience, giving guests more variety without ever compromising on the standard the brand is built on.

Most superfood bowl concepts buy their bases from a distributor and stop there. We didn't. The combination of our premium imports and our in-house homebases is a meaningful competitive moat — a bowl is only as good as what's underneath the toppings, and ours starts with formulas no one else can replicate.

Operational Simplicity by Design

Kaia Bowls was built from day one to be franchisable, which meant engineering out the operational pain points that make most restaurant concepts hard to scale. There are no hoods, no fryers, and no open flame in a Kaia kitchen. That single design choice unlocks a meaningful chain of advantages: lower build-out costs, faster permitting, smaller footprints, simpler ventilation, and a friendlier landlord conversation.

A standard Kaia Bowls store fits in 800 to 1,200 square feet. Total project cost typically lands around $250,000, with a $35,000 franchise fee. Compared to traditional QSR concepts, the capital efficiency and operational simplicity are dramatic — and that's by design, not by accident.

A Three-Daypart Business — Seven Days a Week

Most QSR concepts capture one strong daypart and call it a win. Kaia Bowls was built to perform across all three. Our menu serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner — seven days a week, giving each location all-day relevance and a meaningfully wider revenue window than a single-daypart concept.

Açaí and pitaya bowls and smoothies anchor the morning rush. Poke bowls and heartier builds carry lunch and dinner. The protein add-on extends the menu's appeal across every guest occasion — from a post-workout breakfast to a clean weeknight dinner. For franchisees, three dayparts means three chances to earn a guest's visit every day, and a unit-economics profile that doesn't depend on a single peak hour.

"At Kaia, We Kare" — The Cultural Anchor

Every brand says it cares. Few build the operating system to back it up. Kaia Kare is the cultural philosophy that runs through everything we do — how we train, how we hire, how we treat franchise partners, how we greet guests. It's the reason a Kaia Bowls store feels different from the moment you walk in.

For franchisees, this shows up in tangible ways. New partners receive an 80-hour training program at our Clearwater headquarters, covering operations, product, hospitality, and the day-to-day systems that make a store run. Cristina is personally accessible to every franchise partner — not routed through a help desk, not buried under layers of corporate. When a franchisee has a question, they get an answer from the people who built the brand.

For guests, Kaia Kare shows up in the bowl in front of them and the person who handed it to them. Hospitality, done sincerely, is still the most underused competitive advantage in fast-casual.

Leadership

Cristina — CEO & Co-Founder. Cristina leads the company's strategic direction, brand vision, and franchise development. She also runs Celebritours, a separate travel business, and brings her hospitality expertise directly into the Kaia operating model. She is the primary point of contact for franchise partners and remains personally involved in every Discovery Day.

Marc — Co-Founder; President of Vacance Celebritour Canada. Marc co-founded Kaia Bowls alongside Cristina and serves as President of Vacance Celebritour Canada, a tour operator with deep roots in the travel industry. His background as a tour operator informs the hospitality DNA at the heart of Kaia Bowls — the same instincts that make a great travel experience (anticipation, care, consistency, and follow-through) translate directly into the standards we hold every Kaia Bowls location to.

Together, they've built a leadership culture where franchisees aren't a customer base — they're partners.

The Franchise Opportunity

Kaia Bowls offers protected territories, a streamlined build-out, comprehensive training, and direct ownership-level support. Our franchise development process includes a structured Discovery Day at our Clearwater headquarters, where prospective partners experience the brand firsthand, meet the team, and see exactly what they'd be buying into. We're selective about who we partner with, because the franchisees we bring on today are the ones who define the brand for everyone who comes after them.

Looking Ahead

Kaia Bowls is in active franchise development across the Southeast and beyond. Our focus is disciplined growth — partnering with operators who share the Kaia Kare ethos, opening stores that reflect the standard the brand was built on, and continuing to serve a product no one else in the category can match.

Real fruit. Real flavor. Real care. That's Kaia Bowls.