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Noodles & Company Bets Its 30-Year Legacy on We Know Noodles
Noodles & Company launched "We Know Noodles" in March 2025 as a national 360-degree campaign built around the brand's biggest menu reinvention in its 30-year history, spanning connected TV, radio, social media, digital out-of-home, and in-restaurant touchpoints across the United States.
The campaign marks a decisive moment for the fast-casual chain. Two-thirds of the menu arrived new or improved with this refresh, according to Noodles & Company, introducing vibrant new flavors and inspired ingredients designed to satisfy cravings ranging from comfort classics to globally inspired dishes. New Mac & Cheese variations — including Pulled Pork BBQ, Buffalo Chicken Ranch, and Garlic Bacon Crunch — sit alongside additions such as Cajun Shrimp Fettuccine, Rigatoni Rosa, Basil Pesto Cavatappi, and a Chicken Caesar salad. Each dish reflects a deliberate philosophy: matching noodle shapes to maximise sauce coverage, layering premium ingredients like roasted cherry tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and pickled red onions to build depth of flavour.
Fortnight Collective, the Colorado-based agency that has served as Noodles & Company's agency of record since 2020, conceived the campaign alongside production company Lumenati. The tagline "We Know Noodles" crystallises 30 years of culinary expertise into a single, ownable claim — positioning the brand not merely as a restaurant, but as the definitive authority on noodles in the United States. The campaign announcement and associated quotes were dated March 20, 2025, as reported by mediapost.com, with the broader launch documented across restaurantdive.com and restaurantbusinessonline.com. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic coherence and media breadth against a backdrop of an intensely competitive fast-casual food and drink landscape.
Noodles & Company operates 423 restaurants across 31 U.S. states, according to Investor Noodles, giving the brand a national footprint that demands national-level creative ambition. The "We Know Noodles" campaign answers that ambition directly, translating three decades of noodle expertise into a brand position that competitors in the fast-casual food and drink segment cannot easily replicate. Rivals such as Panera Bread, which competes on menu breadth and digital loyalty, and Chipotle Mexican Grill, which dominates fast-casual brand perception in the United States, have set a high bar for category leadership — making a clearly differentiated culinary authority narrative essential for Noodles & Company to hold its own.
The strategic rationale rests on a consumer insight that is both simple and durable: noodles connect, comfort, and satisfy across cultures, occasions, and dietary preferences. Rather than chasing fleeting food trends, Fortnight Collective and Noodles & Company chose to own depth — leaning into ingredient specificity, preparation craft, and 30 years of menu refinement as proof points. The preceding platform, "Uncommon Goodness," launched in May 2022 by Fortnight Collective as documented by prnewswire.com, covered culinary innovation, employee benefits, rewards, and community impact through an eccentric customer character. "We Know Noodles" sharpens that broad canvas into a single, authoritative culinary claim timed precisely to the brand's most significant menu refresh in its history.
The fast-casual segment in North America represents a substantial share of restaurant-market activity, according to 6wresearch.com and straitsresearch.com, making the timing of a bold campaign launch and reinvented menu in early 2025 a calculated move to capture renewed consumer attention during a period of industry-wide repositioning in the United States.
Fortnight Collective built the "We Know Noodles" creative around a 360-degree media architecture that places the tagline at the centre of every consumer touchpoint. Connected TV, radio, social media, digital out-of-home, and in-restaurant executions each carry the same culinary authority message, ensuring that the brand's reinvented menu and vibrant new flavors register consistently whether a guest encounters the campaign on a streaming platform or standing inside a Noodles & Company location across the United States.
Devin Reiter, President of Fortnight Collective, described the scale of the undertaking in direct terms. "It is not every day that a brand undergoes this type of renovation," Reiter stated, as quoted by mediapost.com. "To be on the journey with Noodles & Company is nothing short of amazing." Those sentiments reflect a creative partnership that has deepened since Fortnight Collective won the business in 2020, with each campaign building on the last. Stephen Kennedy, Executive Vice President of Marketing at Noodles & Company, also contributed to the campaign's strategic direction, as documented by mediapost.com in its March 26, 2025 coverage framing the work as part of a corporate rebrand and complete menu reinvention.
Production company Lumenati executed the visual and production elements of the campaign, bringing the new menu's ingredient stories — roasted cherry tomatoes, pickled red onions, roasted red peppers — to life in formats designed for both broadcast attention and social-media immediacy. The creative approach avoids abstraction: specific dishes, specific ingredients, and specific noodle shapes serve as the campaign's visual vocabulary, grounding the brand's authority claim in tangible, appetising detail. CEO Drew Madsen noted, as reported by restaurantbusinessonline.com, that the campaign's commercials ranked in the top quartile of competitive ads tested, a signal that the craft translated effectively to audience response in the United States market.
Noodles & Company recorded measurable commercial results following the March 2025 campaign launch and menu refresh. The brand reported a 4.4% increase in systemwide same-store sales in Q1 2025, with traffic up 1.8%, according to investor.noodles.com and as further reported by restaurantdive.com. Comparable sales ran approximately 5% higher year-over-year from mid-March through April 2025, per restaurantdive.com and restaurantbusinessonline.com — a performance window that aligns directly with the campaign's initial flight period in the United States.
Sales of the new Mac & Cheese dishes exceeded company expectations, according to restaurantbusinessonline.com, though no specific dollar amount or percentage was disclosed. The brand also recorded double-digit increases in brand awareness metrics following the campaign launch, as reported by mediapost.com, indicating that the "We Know Noodles" positioning reached and registered with new audiences beyond the existing customer base. CEO Drew Madsen's assessment — that the campaign's commercials ranked in the top quartile of competitive ads tested, as reported by restaurantbusinessonline.com — provides an independent creative-effectiveness benchmark that supports the structural argument for the campaign's clarity and memorability.
Structurally, the campaign's strength lies in the alignment between the reinvented menu and the creative claim. When a tagline like "We Know Noodles" is supported by a simultaneous, tangible product transformation covering two-thirds of the menu, it carries the kind of credibility that purely brand-level advertising cannot manufacture. No verified award wins for the campaign have been found across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards, according to clapboard.com. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects the campaign's effective strategic foundation and measurable early returns, balanced against the absence of independent creative-industry recognition at this stage.
"We Know Noodles" is a 2025 national brand campaign by Noodles & Company and Fortnight Collective. Launched in March 2025, it supports the brand's biggest menu reinvention in 30 years, with two-thirds of the menu new or improved, and runs across connected TV, radio, social media, digital out-of-home, and in-restaurant touchpoints in the United States.
Fortnight Collective created the campaign alongside production company Lumenati. Fortnight Collective, a Colorado-based agency, has served as Noodles & Company's agency of record since 2020 and previously developed the brand's 2022 platform "Uncommon Goodness" before building the 2025 We Know Noodles campaign.
Noodles & Company introduced Pulled Pork BBQ, Buffalo Chicken Ranch, and Garlic Bacon Crunch Mac & Cheese variations alongside Cajun Shrimp Fettuccine, Rigatoni Rosa, Basil Pesto Cavatappi, and a Chicken Caesar salad. These new additions formed the core of the reinvented menu that the We Know Noodles campaign was designed to support nationally.
Noodles & Company reported a 4.4% increase in systemwide same-store sales in Q1 2025, with traffic up 1.8%, according to investor.noodles.com and restaurantdive.com. Comparable sales ran approximately 5% higher year-over-year from mid-March through April 2025, the period directly following the campaign launch and menu refresh in the United States.
"We Know Noodles" positions Noodles & Company as the definitive culinary authority on noodles in the United States, grounding the claim in 30 years of expertise. Fortnight Collective designed the tagline to function as a single, ownable brand statement that differentiates the chain from broad fast-casual competitors like Panera Bread and Chipotle Mexican Grill.
No verified award wins for the We Know Noodles campaign have been found across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards, according to clapboard.com. The campaign launched in March 2025, and its eligibility window for major award cycles in the food and drink category remains active as of mid-2025.
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