Friendly Fire Wins Franchise of the Year 2025 and Biggest Franchise Export Breakthrough

The Franchise Brand Leader Awards ceremony at Zagreb's Hotel Zonar was a blast for us - Friendly Fire took home 2 awards!

At the gala ceremony, founders, directors and teams from franchise systems across all of Croatia were seated, selected from nearly 220 active franchise networks that today employ more than 17,500 people.

The jury was composed of experts from Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia and the United Arab Emirates. When the announcers read out the name of the winner in The Biggest Croatian Franchise Exporter category, the name they read was Friendly Fire.

And then they read the name of the winner for Franchise of the Year 2025 - Friendly Fire again!

What these awards are and why they matter

The Franchise Brand Leader Awards is special in a way that all franchises operating in the Croatian market are automatically nominated without applying and without an entry fee, and winners are chosen after careful data analysis by an international expert committee that includes university professors, representatives of national franchise organizations and European franchise business experts.

That means we neither bought these two awards nor earned them through a good presentation, we earned them through work recognized by the experts.

Croatia's Franchise Business Association FIP registers sector growth of around 20% per year, across 13 industry branches, at 1,500 locations. In that context, the Franchise of the Year award and the export breakthrough award aren't handed out as consolation prizes, they go to those who have truly made an impact.

What "biggest export breakthrough" means

riendly Fire didn't start as a global project. It started as an idea - what would an esports and gaming cafe look like with that warm nostalgia we carry from the 90s and 2000s cafes, and which today's gaming community genuinely deserves?

The biggest export breakthrough award says we’ve successfully taken that model beyond our borders. That something we originally built in Croatia has become something others want to take with them.

It’s an honor to be validated by the experts who watch franchises grow (or not grow) outside their home market every day.

What "Franchise of the Year" means

Franchise of the Year 2025 isn't just a domestic title. The winner of this category represents Croatia at the European Franchise Awards, a competition held in Brussels that measures the European peak of franchise business and we will be there. Not as guests, but as Croatian representatives.

What we didn't say on stage

Honestly, what impressed us most that evening wasn't the moment they read our name. It was conversations with the other finalists and winners.

People who asked us how we built the model. Franchise owners from completely different industries who recognized something we had been building for years - sometimes in uncertainty, sometimes by trial and error.

These awards confirm that our path definitely makes sense and, most importantly - it has only just begun.

Let's Go Friendly Fire.