Since its 2017 founding, 7 Brew has quickly established itself as a restaurant brand to watch, with a drive-thru model that serves up more than 20,000 possible drink combinations spanning coffee, energy drinks, smoothies and more. The chain, which is mostly franchised, has over 800 stands across 38 states, is on pace to surpass 1,000 units this year and is the fastest growing brand in the U.S., per a Yelp report. 7 Brew’s growth comes as competitor Dutch Bros notched an impressive 8.3% increase in same-store sales in Q2 2026. The drive-thru beverage chains are currently battling on several fronts.
To accelerate its growth, 7 Brew in August launched its first mobile app, streamlining its loyalty program and giving consumers the ability to order ahead. The app hit the top spot on the iOS App Store and remains in the top five as of press time.
Along with giving loyalty members a chance to win 100,000 points, 7 Brew promoted the launch of its app with a TikTok video that parodies “2001: A Space Odyssey,” with the film’s iconic monolith reimagined as a giant smartphone. The video is the latest in a string of similar marketing efforts from 7 Brew, including parodies of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Mean Girls,” that see the chain working to connect with consumers on TikTok, where the company has more than 685,000 followers and 7.5 million likes.
Building on social media popularity has been a key focus of Nick Chavez, who joined 7 Brew in late 2024 as its first CMO after a three-year stint as the U.S. CMO of KFC. Previously, the executive served in a variety of marketing roles at Nintendo and Yahoo.
“It's been a remarkable period of growth and development in terms of having more 7 Brews in more communities and more places across the country,” Chavez said of his time at the company so far. “That potential is what attracted me to the brand.”
Marketing Dive spoke with Chavez about how he is approaching the CMO role, the loyalty launch and his plans for the chain.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
MARKETING DIVE: What is the challenge and the opportunity of being 7 Brew’s first CMO?
NICK CHAVEZ: First and foremost, there was tremendous existing talent at 7 Brew. The brand had invested early in social media presence, content creators and social media managers, so we have a great in-house team of creative content producers. I had been aware of the brand before coming in, in part due to its social media presence: It's a hot brand on TikTok and Instagram.
Coming in as a new CMO, I wanted to lean into that momentum, recognize the talent that was already in these walls, continue to engage with positive fan sentiment and fan communities that were already built up around 7 Brew. For lack of a better expression, I didn't want to screw that up.
How are you building up 7 Brew’s marketing organization, both internally and with outside partners?
We are continuing to build out a world-class marketing organization at 7 Brew. We think we can build and develop one of the world's greatest beverage brands, so we are investing heavily in in-house talent and in-house marketing sophistication, from a tool kit standpoint. We are beginning to partner more and more with the best agencies in the business to continue to drive brand, sales and traffic growth, as well.
We hired Amp as our media agency of record with a strong data-driven approach to paid media, particularly paid digital and social media. We partner with different agencies and platforms in some of our content and influencer marketing on socials, and we are starting to partner more and more with individual creative agencies on a project basis to extend our capabilities where we don't have those capabilities in house yet.
Our competitors in the space have 10-times, sometimes 100-times the budgets we have at this point. We're still a small brand that's growing very quickly, but we'll be ready to compete. We'll be ready to play with the big boys and girls when the time comes.
How are you approaching social-first marketing to grow the brand?
We take great pride in two facts about the brand, as measured by Technomic. The first is that the brand has been rated as number one in overall consumer rating of any QSR brand in the United States; that's something we want to protect and continue to grow and lean into. The second is that we're also number one in likelihood to recommend among coffee cafe brands in the United States. A lot of what we do from a marketing perspective is actually leaning into that buzz and the positivity, the joy and the kindness of the experience that encourages customers to tell their friends, family and loved ones about 7 Brew.
The stickers that we pass out or the car coasters that we give away, a lot of that is intentionally designed to thank our customers for their loyalty and for their visit, but also to encourage them to spread the word about 7 Brew, so we lean into things that are worth talking about.
How does 7 Brew’s new app address consumer concerns?
Our fans have embraced the app, and the app's incredibly useful in that it's designed to improve the order-ahead process and the menu discovery process. One thing that we've heard from our guests — maybe for newer guests and newer customers — is that with over 20,000 possible flavor combinations across different categories of beverages, the menu can be a little bit intimidating. The app is there to enable new customers to discover drinks that they might love.
But then, equally so, existing 7 Brew customers, fans and followers can customize their drinks on the app, and we're already seeing that our fans and followers are building, customizing and discovering new drinks and new possibilities from 7 Brew via the app. They can then save and share those drink discoveries with their friends. The app is really social by design, tying back to the menu and to drink discovery.
We've heard over the last few years from our 7 Rewards members that they needed an easier way to just track their progress toward free drinks. The fundamentals of the 7 Rewards program continue to stay the same — you earn 100 points for any size drink you buy from 7 Brew, and at 1,000 points, you earn an any size free drink reward. What's new about the app is now you can actually bank those 1,000 points, continue to earn more points on top of that, and if you so choose, you could choose to redeem them for free drinks, or you could now choose to redeem them for really cool 7 Brew swag and merch, all the way up to things like cornhole sets or a mini fridge.
Disclosure: Technomic is part of Informa, the company that owns a controlling stake in Informa TechTarget, publisher of Marketing Dive.
