Restaurant Operator

In this episode of the Pizza Marketplace Podcast, Editor Mandy Detwiler talks to Carl Comeaux, CEO and partner of Texas-based Crust Pizza Co. Comeaux joined the company after being a fan of its pizza. Crust now has 30 units in Texas and Louisiana and plans to grow another 15 in 2025. It has seven corporate stores and 23 franchised units with a goal of 250 units in nine years.

"We're looking for owner-operators," Comeaux said in the podcast. "Right now at this stage of where we're at in growth, eventually we'll be looking for multi-unit franchisees that own 10 to 15 other units for other concepts that are looking for a second brand to sink their teeth into."

Comeaux said the product helps Crust stand out in a heavy pizza field.

"It's premium quality," he said, adding the dough is made in house every four hours. "Our sauces are all proprietary blends — our pizza sauce, marinara, Ranch, Alfredo ... the sauce are amazing that you can put on the pizza or dip. ... We created our own propriety cheese about a year ago, and when we did that we were able to save 50 cents per pound on cheese."

To learn more about Crust Pizza Co.'s operations and how the brand is building its own tech stack, click the link above.

In this episode of the Restaurant Operator Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb, talks with Richard Del Valle, chief of staff and chief information officer for Bojangles, and Parrish Chapman, chief revenue officer for Grubbrr, about Bojangles' partnership with Grubbrr for kiosks in house.

Bojangles recently ran a trial using Grubbrr's kiosks and is now rolling them out amongst the brand's 800 units.

"It's part of an ongoing effort on our part to reach the guest the way the guest most wants to be reached," said Del Valle. "We realized there's a generation out there that, frankly, doesn't like talking to people and so we wanted to have options where our traditional guests perhaps would want to go over and talk to one of our team members and engage in a two-way relationship there. We know there's other guests who just want to get in and order their food and move."

Del Valle said an added benefit to kiosks that is allows front-line workers to focus on order accuracy and the taking away interaction with the guests for order fulfillment.

Parrish said the Bojangles team was thoughtful when it came to testing kiosks.

"They asked all the right questions," he said. "They had metrics that they had agreed on ahead of time. What was important to their brand was not replacing human interaction. We wanted to double down on that and have order accuracy and take the stress off the front counter and then monitor the metrics."

To learn more about the Grubbrr and Bojangles partnership, click the player at the top of the page.

In this episode of the Pizza Marketplace Podcast, Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace, talks to Jim Metevier, CEO of Mountain Mike's Pizza. The California chain of 240 restaurants is making waves on the West Coast with its toppings-heavy pies and tight operations.

Metevier has more than 30 years experience in the restaurant industry. He previously served as the company's president and COO before taking the reigns as CEO earlier this year.

Metevier said the restaurant business is not for the faint of heart.

"I always find it funny when I talk to prospective franchisees ... people will tell me 'Hey, when I retire, I want to open a restaurant. That's the opposite of retiring!" he said.

To listen to the podcast in its entirety, click the link above.

In this episode of the Restaurant Operator Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of QSRweb.com and PizzaMarketplace.com, chats with Scott Deviney, CEO of Chicken Salad Chick.

The brand was started by two entrepreneurs in Auburn with one making varieties of chicken salad out of her home. The first Chicken Salad Chick location opened in Jan. 2008 with drive-thru and carryout only. The founders made 40 pounds of chicken salad to sell, opened at 11 a.m. and by 1 p.m. were sold out.

"The business took off. It had a cult following," Deviney said. "Eventually they expanded that first location from just drive-thru and takeout."

Franchising began in 2012.

To learn more about Chicken Salad Chick, click the link above to listen to the podcast in its entirety.

In this episode of the Pizza Marketplace Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace, talks to Brandon Hunt and Zane Hunt, brothers who launched Via 313 in Austin, Texas.

Zane said he and his brother were raised in the Detroit, and grew up eating square pizza, now known as Detroit-style pizza.

"You thinking about where we're at right now in 2024 with the hyper gentrification of pizza," he said. "Back then, there was just round and square pizza. Round pizza could have been a number of different things. Square pizza could have been a number of different things, whether its was a sheet-pan pizza from an Italian bakery or Grandma-style pizza, and then we had Detroit with the caramelized edges."

It took the brothers traveling to different parts of the country to realize that they were fortunate to have different styles of pizza in Detroit.

Zane moved to Austin in 2009 with his wife and kids and sought out pizza like he had at home "and we realized quickly it didn't exist," he said.

Zane and Brandon began examining what it would look like if they started their own pizza brand in Austin. They wanted to bring Detroit-style pizza to Austin, and used a recipe they were both comfortable with. It took almost two years to open their first location, a pizza trailer.

Brandon said what sets Via 313 is now focused on consistency and service. Though they won't compare their pizza to other Detroit-style brands, they instead focus on the customer and efficiency.

"Service was a thing that could separate us," Brandon said. "You really can't debate whether service is good or not or if we're the best at service. That's not debatable. That's really important to us."

To listen to the podcast in its entirety, click the arrow above.

In this episode of the Restaurant Operator Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb, talks to Rush Bowls founder Andrew Pudalov, who started out in finance before trading dollar signs for menu items.

Pudalov said 9/11 was a trigger for leaving the financial world. His wife worked in the Twin Towers and her first day back from maternity leave was the day the towers came down. He moved his family to Boulder, Colorado, and looked for something "dynamically different," he said.

"I loved entrepreneurship and I was pretty darn good at what I did," he said, "so it afforded me the opportunity, quite frankly, to try something very different and kind of fine tune my skillsets."

He said living in Manhattan 20 years ago, there was little thought to health and wellness in the restaurant industry. He launched Rush Bowls in Boulder.

"When I started this idea of a meal concept, I wanted to go somewhere near a college where students would be more adept at testing and trying new things than a more mature clientele," Pudalov added.

To listen to Pudalov's journey as he launched Rush Bowls, click the link above.

In this episode of the Pizza Marketplace Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace, talks to Little Caesars franchisee Vicki Dunn-Marshall. Dunn-Marshall's focus on philanthropy has led to start Pizza Paws, a campaign that raises money for police K-9 units across the country.

The idea came about after there was a prison break in one of the towns where she operates a Little Caesars store. They brought in K-9 units from three or four states for several days.

"We were feeding the officers," Dunn-Marshall said. "They don't get support for what they do."

Human handlers pay for the food and vet visits themselves, perhaps using a small stipend from the department.

In this episode of the Restaurant Operator Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of PizzaMarketplace.com and QSRweb.com talks to Geoff Henry, president of bubble tea brand Gong Cha.

"The bubble tea category has been around for quite some time," Henry said in the podcast. "It kind of started back in Asia, typically in Taiwan in the early 1990s. Taiwan is known for its night markets where people can walk around and try different food cuisines that are up and coming."

Gong Cha is in 27 countries around the world. To learn more about Gong Cha's focus on quality, its employees and customers, click the link above.

In this episode of the Pizza Marketplace Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace, talks to Wesley Keegan, founder of TailGate Brewery, a nine-unit pizzeria and brew hall in Nashville, Tennessee.

Keegan started with a brewery, but found his customers would have a beer and then leave to go find food. He tried bringing in food trucks, but that didn't seem to work. Instead, he started his own pizzeria using the best ingredients he could find.

"We run a full pizza kitchen in all of our stores and it's really a full pizza restaurant by every measure, but being a brewery, we call it a taproom, and the majority of our taproom sales is pizza," Keegan said.

To learn more about beer and pizza sales, listen to the podcast in its entirety.

In this episode of the Restaurant Operator Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb, talks to Tom Gordon, CEO of Slim Chickens. The brand launched in 2003, has more than 280 units and is based in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

"We open about a store a week," Gordon said. "We do 50 to 60 domestic stores every year, and we do international stores every year, too. We do business in the U.K., and 54 of those stores are in the U.K."

The brand recently opened its first store in Berlin as well.

Gordon said the food is the hero at Slim Chickens, and is paramount to the brand's success as it grows.

"The food has to be the thing that draws people in," he said.