Walk into a Ford’s Garage, and a Model A or Model T usually greets you first, suspended above the bar like a piece of rolling history. Garage doors line the dining room, raised or lowered based on the weather, and engines mounted along the walls turn the space into something between a restaurant and a small museum. Burgers, craft beer, and bourbon come next, but that combination of heritage and comfort food is exactly the point.
Chief Development Officer Dave Ragosa spent time with us walking through that story, and for him, it starts with a feeling.
A Restaurant Built to Honor an American Icon
Ragosa has been in franchising for 20-plus years, most recently as a director at Inspire Brands, where he worked across brands including Jimmy John’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Arby’s and Sonic. When Ford’s Garage came calling in 2023, he weighed staying the course vs following what his mentor once shared: “you never want to run away from something, you want to run towards something.” He toured a few restaurants himself before deciding, curious whether the experience matched the pitch.
What he found was more than the great food; there was a feeling. “There’s what I call a soul behind the brand,” Ragosa said, and not many brands, in his view, can say the same. He has watched concepts in franchising launch with energy “like a rocket” only to fade just as fast. Ford’s Garage, by contrast, had staying power tied to Ford Motor Company, the Ford legacy, and the blue oval.
The Ford’s Garage menu has parallels with Ford itself: innovative, handmade American classics, like angus beef burgers, slow-cooked BBQ ribs, salads, and an onion ring tower served on an oil funnel, plus handcrafted cocktails and local craft beers. Paired with a room built around Ford’s own story, the classics become part of the tribute: familiar yet elevated food, built on great recipes, in a space designed to honor American manufacturing history and the people who built it.
From a Fort Myers Corner to a National Story
Ford’s Garage traces back to 2012, when the first location, still standing today as what Ragosa calls “the OG,” opened in downtown Fort Myers, Florida. A place not that far from Henry Ford’s winter estate. The founders of Ford’s Garage were, in Ragosa’s words, “history lovers, if you will,” and their homage to Henry Ford took shape just as Fort Myers was rebuilding its downtown core. That same wave of development produced two sibling concepts nearby: Capone’s, named for Al Capone, and Firestone’s, named for Harvey Firestone.
Of the three, Ford’s Garage was the one Ragosa says “just kept on crushing it and doing better and better” in their downtown location. Success came quickly enough that the founders opened a second location in Cape Coral, which was a freestanding design. Then, a third inside a lifestyle center located in Estero, testing the concept across formats without losing momentum. Each version performed well, giving the team confidence that the model could travel beyond Greater Fort Myers.
Somewhere in that early growth, Ford’s Garage opened without a formal agreement with Ford Motor Company. Ford noticed, and rather than object, the automaker gave the founders room to build. What started informally grew into the licensing arrangement between Ford’s Garage and Ford Motor Company that still underpins the brand today.
A Model Built Around the Garage
Ford’s Garage typically looks for 6,500 to 7,500 square feet, with a strong preference today for second-generation restaurant spaces rather than ground-up new construction. Sites generally need 14-foot ceilings, a minimum population of 100,000 within a five-mile radius, and roughly 30,000 cars passing by each day. Outdoor patios matter more in warmer climates; in the Northeast, Ragosa said, a patio is “nice to have,” but not required the way it can be further south.
Whatever the footprint, the interior sticks to a consistent formula. Garage doors show up in every location, sometimes raised and sometimes lowered, depending on the weather, and floors stay polished but deliberately rough rather than tiled, so the space feels easy to settle into. A Model A or Model T hangs above the bar at every restaurant, “a staple of the brand,” and each location displays a couple vehicles outside, with some sites showing three or four depending on zoning and layout.
Real Cars, Real Stories
Those vehicles are not decorative shells. “None of them are molds. They’re all real Ford vehicles,” Ragosa said, explaining that a vendor sources and prepares each car, draining and sealing anything that needs it for health purposes before installation. Most are salvaged and gutted for the restaurant setting, but the engine mounted on the wall typically comes from that same vehicle. It’s a detail meant to reward a second look, and part of why Ragosa believes the concept works for “that 8 to 80+ year-old audience,” pulling in kids drawn to the cars outside and older guests with their own history with the Ford brand.
Design carries into the menu as well. Ragosa said the team built the lineup “to what I call not have the veto vote,” meaning there is a healthy option, a classic burger, and something simple for kids, so no single member of a group doesn’t have something that fits their preference. That flexibility shows up in the mix of guests, from repeat regular and business lunches to parents with kids and grandparents with grandkids. Ragosa’s own order splits the difference: left to his usual choice, he goes for the classic American Standard burger, and when he is trying to eat healthy, he orders the ahi tuna.
Franchising Takes the Brand on the Road
Ford’s Garage began franchising in 2015, with the first franchised units opening in Florida in 2016 and 2017. Ford also wanted a presence near its own home base, and a franchisee answered that call by opening a Ford’s Garage in Dearborn, Michigan, close enough to Ford Motor Company’s headquarters to become something of a tourist stop in its own right.
Growth has stayed intentional rather than aggressive. “We’re not just trying to open as many restaurants as possible with as many franchisees,” Ragosa said. Ford’s Garage looks for multi-unit operators with restaurant experience, and Ragosa frames the process as a two-way evaluation rather than a sales pitch. “It’s always a privilege to learn more about you, just like folks want to learn more about Ford’s Garage,” he said.
Once a franchise agreement is signed, the path to opening day runs about 18 months and includes site selection, market tours, support through lease negotiations, and a construction team that helps guide the build-out. Managers complete a 10-week training program, and a dedicated opening team arrives roughly 2 weeks before launch to support the new restaurant.
Each location is run by six managers, led by a general manager role Ford’s Garage calls the Garage Partner, along with a staff of 100 to 125 team members, most of whom are part-time. Ragosa is quick to point out that these are locally owned businesses run by franchise partners with community ties, employing well over a hundred people in their own communities. That search for the right kind of operator, someone who already knows how to run a guest-facing business with multiple locations and a strong understanding of their local trade area, has increasingly pointed Ford’s Garage toward a familiar source: Ford’s own dealer network.
The Business Skills That Carry Over from the Showroom
Running a car dealership and running a restaurant look like two different businesses on paper, but Ragosa sees more overlap than most people expect. Dealership principals already work sales floors full of guests, manage teams of employees across departments, and oversee large facilities every day. Those are the same fundamentals that keep a restaurant running.
“Although the Ford dealer is different than running a restaurant, the blocking and tackling of business is very similar,” Ragosa said.
That overlap is part of why the model works without asking dealership owners to become restaurant operators overnight. In most partnerships, the dealership takes on the investor role, while day-to-day management is handled by an operating partner with full-service restaurant experience. It’s a structure Ragosa distills simply: “We don’t sell cars, they don’t sell burgers.” Ford’s Garage applies a similar standard across its broader franchisee base, favoring multi-unit operators who already understand what it takes to scale a guest-facing business.
Full Circle: When the Dealership Becomes the Franchise Partner
National name recognition helps from the start; people know Ford and the blue oval before they ever walk through the door. Locally, Ford’s Garage leans on community marketing, supporting fundraisers, schools, EMTs, and firehouses to build trust one relationship at a time. Layered on top of both is an advantage Ragosa believes no other restaurant brand can claim: a built-in relationship with Ford dealerships in the same market, where service departments and sales teams become regular lunch and dinner guests, and Ford owners have an obvious reason to try the restaurant next door.
That relationship has already evolved into full ownership stakes. Ford’s Garage’s first dealership partnership began with Bozard Ford in St. Augustine, Florida, where the restaurant sits directly on the dealership property. “Bozard Ford was our first one. They’re tremendous. They’re a great partnership,” Ragosa said, noting the dealership liked the results enough – including multiple top 10 national Ford and Lincoln sales finishes – to invest in a second Ford’s Garage location.
Not every dealership partnership looks the same. In the Short Pump area of Richmond, Virginia, the Ford’s Garage ownership group partnered with Richmond Ford, a dealership in the same market but not located on the property itself, proof that the model works with or without a shared address.
Ford’s Garage is actively building on that model, talking with dealerships already sharing a market with an existing restaurant about marketing opportunities, and approaching dealers in new target markets about becoming franchisees outright. The brand pairs its own guest data with Ford’s customer information to help identify markets worth pursuing together. Some of that interest happens organically: dealership staff visiting Dearborn for training routinely eat at the Ford’s Garage near Ford’s global headquarters, and conversations about franchising often start over that meal. Orlando works the same way on a larger scale. With five or more locations in the market and a steady flow of visiting families, dealers passing through tend to notice and ask questions of their own.
Measuring Success by the Experience, Not the Count
Internal research at Ford’s Garage has pointed to strong repeat business, with Ragosa recalling the high statistical percentage of guests who try the restaurant come back. Looking ahead, when asked about future growth Ragosa is comfortable naming a number, of having close to 75 open restaurants in the next five years, but he is careful about what that number means. “It’s not how many, it’s how many successful restaurants,” he said.
That approach is already playing out on the ground. Ford’s Garage currently operates 35 locations across eight states, with growth expected to push that close to 40 locations in 10 states by the end of the year and more restaurants under construction. New openings include a location on New York’s Long Island and a Menlo Park Mall restaurant in New Jersey slated for November, and development underway in Tennessee, Wisconsin, Delaware, and more.
Ragosa keeps returning to the same idea when he talks about what comes next: the goal was never to chase a number for its own sake, but to build restaurants worth returning to. That is what the garage doors, the real Ford vehicles, and a menu built around quality, handmade classics, and craft beer and cocktails are all working toward: a place where a family can celebrate a Little League championship, old friends can catch up over a beer, or a couple can slip out for a dinner and still feel like part of something bigger.
It’s not hard to picture how the next chapter starts: a dealership team in Dearborn for a visit to Ford’s headquarters, or passing through one of the brand’s many locations across Florida, the Northeast, and the Midwest, sitting down for dinner and walking away asking how to bring one home. If Ford’s Garage keeps growing that way, one right partner and one right market at a time, the soul Ragosa first noticed in 2023 will be what carries it forward.
