la Madeleine, the Dallas-based French-inspired café brand, has signed an eight-location development agreement with Eddie Musallet of Express Stop and The Musallet Group to enter the Kansas City metropolitan area, with the first café scheduled to open in late fall 2027.
The deal is a multi-unit development agreement, the structure la Madeleine says it uses to enter new markets and build a presence across surrounding communities. Eight cafés are committed under the agreement, with further locations to follow after the first opening. The Musallet Group is a multi-unit business group whose portfolio spans grocery, convenience retail and franchised businesses in the Kansas City area, giving the brand an operator with experience across communities in Kansas and Missouri.
la Madeleine’s senior director of franchise development and real estate, Mark Ramage, framed the agreement around local knowledge and long-term commitment.
A strong foundation for our Midwest debut and future growth in the region.
The choice of an established regional operator rather than a first-time franchisee follows a pattern visible across multi-unit franchising: the franchisor trades speed for an operator who already employs staff, manages sites and holds local landlord and supplier relationships. A comparable structure appeared in the recent Chicken Salad Chick agreement, covered in our report on its 25-unit Upstate New York deal.
la Madeleine operates nearly 90 corporate and franchise locations across the United States, including cafés in airports, universities and hospitals. It also runs two international locations in Bangalore, India. The company said earlier this year that 2026 would be its fastest pace of café openings since 2017, with growth focused on franchise development, non-traditional venues and the rollout of a small-format prototype.
For investors weighing master-franchise rights in Asia Pacific and MENA, the transaction illustrates how a mid-sized American café brand sequences growth: a prototype designed for smaller footprints, non-traditional venues alongside high streets, and development rights granted to operators with adjacent retail experience. The Bangalore presence shows the brand has already tested an overseas partnership, though the source does not disclose how those two cafés are structured. Investors comparing café concepts can read this agreement alongside our analysis of how franchisors choose a master franchisee and the recent Yo-Chi move into the US market, which show the same emphasis on partner capability before territory size.
Source: Fast Casual — la Madeleine signs 8-location deal to enter Kansas City
