Blaze Pizza CEO on Partnering with LeBron James

the phone in California. I'm thinking about my pizza, which is why I can't speak. Mandy. Nice to have you here, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you so much for having me. Delighted to be here and love to hear that you have your weekly pizza. That sounds like the majority of Americans. I think it's a number of thirteen percent of the population is eating pizza on any particular day. So that is what we'll tell me about the last the last year, Like, how has that been for you? I mean go back,

first of all, a year. What was going through your mind as the pandemic was kicking off? Yeah, it's not funny. A year. It feels like it and then it feels like ten years if you think back to that first week of shutdowns when everything is sort of solidified. No one knew if this was the apocalypse, right. So the first thing that we had to do is make sure our franchisees were financially secured, were franchise organization uh So, we gave an industry leading release package for nine weeks.

We coached them on p PP. We had individual coaching sessions with franchisees to make sure they could get those dollars that as they became available. We provided other forms of relief. We got tons of vendor donations for hand sanitizer, masks, a lot of the things that had to go into the restaurant to make sure that safety was paramount for our team members as well as our guests coming into

the restaurant. And then really where we deepened what is really important to me anyway from a franchise perspective, is transparency and communication. We had daily calls with our franchise council. We had weekly franchise all hand franchise e calls where we said here's what we know, here's what we don't know, here's what we're gonna tell you next week, right. And so if you think about the business are dying in. Sales were still eighty percent of our top line pre pandemic,

and then they all just shut off. So we had to what I called get gorilla and figure out how we raise awareness that we were still open. You could still come into a blaze, walk down the line, make your pizza and take it out. You just couldn't sit down in the restaurant. And you know, we already had delivery with two providers UH and other other um like purpose excuse me, carry out and walk out service, but we introduced curbside carry out in three weeks time. I

just said, we gotta get it up. We gotta figure out how to do this and move quickly and make it happen. We added Uper Eats as our third delivery provider and those were incremental sales UH. And so we just put together a lot of programs to make sure that we were taking care of our franchises and getting those sales back in the door as fast as we

possibly could. You know, it's interesting, there's a lot of conversations that we have had um with restaurants that you know had a digital strategy perhaps, but all of a sudden because they had to ramped it up dramatically. Tell me about the digitization of your business and how that strategy has maybe changed because of the pandemic, or or has been ramped up. Uh, ramped up you called it? What's the word you would use? Yeah, I mean it's we're up a hundred. Yeah. We started um in the

summer of nineteen. We launched two specialty crusts, the cauliflower crust, and we were the first national chain to launch a Keto crust six Graham's Net carbs, and so right on the heels of that, we also launched a large pizza, a shareable family office space, you know, more like what a legacy pizza looks like. And it delivers better because it's engineered to hold heat. And so we had a three sixty degree media campaign to build a digital business

and it was growing. We had an eight point comps wing from call it all of of figure prior to just before the printed pandemic. Uh, and then it dropped out. So from great pain comes great reward at times. What this has done for us is build that digital business. We range week to week from fifty fifty to sixty forty in terms of digital versus dining, and what that means for us is greater total top line coming out

of the pandemic. Might be a slightly painful way to get there, going through all the things that we had to do, but the mass of people who came to off premise dining, you know, I've read some statistics at one point about there's a six increase of people over the age of fifty adopting app ordering right deliveries or party delivering, those sort of things that we saw it in the numbers and what these players have been able

to accomplish. So we got our piece of that, and now as we get dining rooms reopened again, we're retaining eight percent of that business or so, which means our volumes are much higher than they were previously, which again is it's a win for the brands. I mean, they kind of ask you it's like to have Lebron James as an investor, as a franchise e, a franchise e owner, someone who's actually been a lot of videos, viral videos, um for Blaze Pizza. What is that like? One word? Fun?

So exciting? You know, Lebron Is is a great partner in that he actually cares and he makes selective choices about who he quote gets in bed with right and years ago he decided to come to Blaze because of our philosophy of clean ingredients, better food, better for you, you know, a new way to pizza upgrades. And so it's it's a rather informal partnership that just really it's fun. Anything that we offer up to him, like those viral videos, he just says, yeah, let's have a good time with

us and and see what we can do. And it's really just part of his portfolio. And Blaze wins when he wins, and vice versa. So it's a it's a very nice additive part too with the Blaze persona is for sure. Well, it's interesting to you talk about kind of things that are important to him in terms of how you guys make your pizzas it's real ingredients, not frozen, they're made in house every day, no chemicals, no additives,

no nitrates in the meats. I mean, this is a huge trend in the food industry and we just see it continue to pick up momentum. How is that shaping kind of how you guys continue to move forward, how you uh you know supply out ingredients. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, our chef, chef Rad Kent, was one of the founders of Blaze, and honestly I rely on him quite a bit and the concept does because his background is really unique. He's got a business degree,

he's a food scientist. He has worked as a personal chef and was a food designer for some large brands across the country. So he's a very unique chef in that he understands what corporate R and D is about, but he really makes amazing food. So he's one of the first people who worked directly with providers to do things that you would never think of, like take additives

and preservatives out of banana peppers. All other banana peppers have some kind of preservative in them to keep that yellow, bright, vibrant color, and we have none of that. So the list is long of things where he is just decided it's important and he really wants to change the world. He wants to have an impact on food supply and the food system and showing that you don't have to, you know, compromise when you eat things. It's not we don't do it in a luxury way. We're not here

to you know, tell people how they should eat. To us, just the cornerstone of how we want to present ourselves and what is important to the consumer. So anything we put in the restaurants, we put it through that lens of does it meet this criteria of really being a better product and tasting amazing? Right, We're not out just chasing trends just for the sake of chasing them. So it actually is thank you for mentioning it a really

important part of of what we do. Well, it's a lot, and I got to say it's a bigger and bigger conversation that we are having, um when it comes to anything with food. I mean, I think back to conversation sations we've had with John mackew over at Whole Foods, conversations I had for years with Steve Els about what they were doing at Chipotle, like this whole idea of how can we make kind of the whole food supply chain better and provide people with food that is better

for them? Ultimately, UM, going forward, tell me about growth plans and has the pandemic sped them up, slowed them down? How has it changed maybe you know the expansion or any kind of cop ex spending going forward. Great question. Really, the slowness that came from the pandemic was related to just COVID delays, not necessarily anyone having trepidation about opening

a restaurant. So we opened twenty restaurants last year. We've got thirty in the pipeline this year, which means people might have been a little slower to pull the trigger on new opportunities, but real estate is opening up, so that means this is where the growth moment comes, and particularly after large economic disruptions or life changing economic situation, franchise these tend to win people who might be displaced from their jobs and have always had this dream of

running a restaurant, to have some involvement or have an operating partner who has some experience, actually will come seek out brands like us. We have over a hundred fifty people in our pipeline who are interested in opening Blazers. We have territories available in some really hot markets because we need to build some density. There's still an awareness proposition for fast casual pizza across the country where a lot of people need to figure out what that is.

And to your point, a moment ago figure out what better pizza tastes like. Um, so are we have a rough sencil to eight and that's based on sustainable growth. I think there's a lot of concerns with franchisees occasionally about other just opening a restaurants to open them. Uh, I'm I am more about franchise profitability. Right. The more I can get you to open a restaurant that has a great return, you will open more restaurants and then

my pm L takes care of itself. So yeah, we have a we have a gre eight track record ahead of us of um getting to that eight hundred number, but in a really sustainable way. Yeah, really interesting. Um is it all going to stay US Canada or their thoughts overseas expand the overseas network or how do you see it? Oh? Definitely, yeah, definitely. We're actually already in Dubai boxing. Um yeah, no worries stories um, and I

think this brand has legs almost universal. Any pizzas just one of those fiquitous food groups, right, but certainly India, South Korea is a tremendous market. China, Um, yeah, sky's the limit. We have a little bit of work we're doing this year on some of the domestic footprint. Really optimizing franchise the profitability again, because it's the better you can get that machine to work, the faster the proposition

sells itself. So there's a lot of investment that we're making this year from a corporate perspective to make sure that happens. But we absolutely have our eye on other international markets to think of pizza's a main food group. I'm just going to put that out there. Um, what's the plan? Though? Do you stay private? There's lots of money floating out there, there's companies going public through a spack. I've talked to folks with restaurants backs who are looking

for properties to snap up. What's the plan? Is there anything on that horizon? I get a lot of calls from there. I bet you do. Um, yeah, I think eventually, right, But the franchise model is pretty capital light, so there's not a burning need for me right now to raise a ton of money. But it's one of those things that we are I I described laze as we're at the Harvard business case pivot point of where restaurant companies

get right. You get three four hundred units and you either invest like I was referring to a moment ago. Put some money into it, do consumer research, some brand work, make sure you're pricing is aligned, focus on profitability, and put any infrastructure such that you can grow to five hundred thousand, or you get really fighting about your own PNL and how spect everybody thinks you are and you

might go too soon. Uh, and so I say yes, but it's not what I lay away to think, you know, lay awake at night thinking about right, It's more about this idea of just growing the concept. So where I believe that. She well, this was a great conversation. Do come back and tell us how things are going, and we'd love to hear updates. Have a good weekend, Mandy Shaw, she's president CEO of Blaze Pizza, joining us from California. I did a quick pull. Pepperoni is the favorite topping?

Kevin Cirelli coming up with soundown, what's your favorite topping on pizza? Opperoni? You know, I know what I'm having for dinner and Congressman Brendan Boyle is joining me. Pizza. That's I'm definitely having pizza tonight. Definitely have a good show. Looking forward to it all right, Sona with Kevin's really coming out. From our whole Blueberg Business Week team, thank you so much. Everyone, have a good and safe weekend. This is blue Berg