Chuck Soderstrom, second from left, is the owner of the Wingstop franchisee group Magic Wingdom which merged this year with MoMex, another Wingstop operator in Florida, to form MoMagic. With Soderstrom are, left to right, director of operations Jordan Ridgeway, business partner Lisa Soderstrom, brand partner Justin Moses and Giji Kurian, the COO.
They were once competing for the same restaurant space. They’re now business partners with big development plans.
Wingstop franchisees Chuck Soderstrom, the owner of Orlando-based Magic Wingdom, and Mike Moses, the owner of Jacksonville-based MoMe, put their egos aside this year to form an umbrella company, MoMagic, and become one of the brand’s largest franchisee groups with 38 units in Florida.
It’s a partnership that’s already netting big returns.
Wingstop franchisees Mike Moses, right, and son, Justin Moses, outside one of their Florida locations.
“Chuck and I can focus on what we do best now,” said Moses. “He’s much smarter than me about running the financials while I am more of an operational guy. It’s really been a nice blend of two different groups. We can grow our businesses together now and don’t have to compete against each other anymore.”
A 62-unit development agreement allows their new restaurant group to grow their Wingstop portfolio to more than 100 locations in central and northern Florida and parts of southern Georgia. In the last two months, MoMagic opened Wingstops in Kingsland, Georgia, and Melbourne, Cocoa Commons, and Palm Bay, Florida. The group anticipates opening 20 stores next year and another 19 in both 2026 and 2027.
“From both an operational and business perspective, this merger has worked really, really well for us. We now have shared infrastructure, shared synergies and shared operational leadership. That just makes running everything a lot easier for us both,” Soderstrom said about his partnership with Moses.
Soderstrom, a 66-year-old former Wall Street hedge fund manager who opened his first Wingstop in 2016, said he and Moses started discussing the merger a few years ago when they both sat on the franchise advisory committee for Wingstop.
Moses, 73, who got his start as a Taco Bell operator nearly four decades ago, said he sold his Taco Bell stores about 10 years ago to focus exclusively Wingstop. MoMex entered the merger with Magic Wingdom with 14 Wingstops.
Soderstrom’s group owns 24 Wingstops. He said the average unit volumes of his and Moses’ restaurants are at or above systemwide averages of $2 million.
With global sales of $3.5 billion, Wingstop landed at No. 33 on the Top 400. The brand is ending the year with over 2,450 units worldwide.
Related: Wingstop AUV Tops $2 Million in Q2 as Brand Keeps Growing
Soderstrom and Moses bring vastly different backgrounds to their partnership. Moses grew up in Texas and speaks in a pleasingly thick southern drawl. Soderstrom meanwhile, is from Chicago and has spent the majority of his career in the often-stressful financial service industry. At the same time, he’s learned to balance work and family life and is a nationally ranked squash player for his age group.
Despite their differences, Soderstrom and Moses said they share similar leadership styles and common goals in growing their Wingstop portfolios. They also have key family members involved in their business with Lisa Soderstrom, Chuck Soderstrom’s wife, overseeing human resources and Justin Moses, Mike Moses’ son, running store operations for MoMagic.
In MoMagic’s corporate hierarchy, Cliff Galloway, who was the chief operating officer of Magic Wingdom, oversees development and construction and Tara Dicks, who’s worked for Moses for 25 years, is the chief financial officer. Gifi Kurian, MoMagic’s new COO, was hired this year to pull all of the group’s business operations together. Soderstrom said Kurian worked for Taco Bell and at one time oversaw 100 corporate stores.
Jordan Ridgeway, who ran Magic Wingdom operations since its inception, also plays a key senior operational role for MoMagic reporting to Kurian.
“I don’t remember Chuck and me disagreeing once on how to run the company and that’s because we have built a great infrastructure with really talented people running the day-to-day operations,” Moses said.
Asked how they came up with the name of their joint venture restaurant group, Moses credited AI. “Chuck put in both of our company names and out came MoMagic,” he said. “When he asked me what I thought of it, I told him that’s it, that’s perfect.”
“Mike and I still love running restaurants and growing our businesses, and we’ll continue to do that with MoMagic which owns and operates all our stores now,” Soderstrom said. “This joint venture just makes it a lot easier moving forward.”