September 2, 2025 • 31 mins
Pizza Inn is a massive sleeping giant with latent equity, Rave Restaurant Group CEO Brandon Solano tells Bloomberg Intelligence. In this episode of the Choppin’ It Up podcast, Solano sits down with BI’s senior restaurant and foodservice analyst Michael Halen to discuss why the chain’s buffet format is its biggest growth opportunity while weighing in on fast-casual pizza weakness, the rise of “Build-Your-Own Chipotle,” and Pizza Inn’s “Bambi & Friends” pie.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Welcome to Chopping It Up. I'm your host, Mike Hanlon,
the senior Restaurant and Food Service analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
Our research and that a bi's five hundred analysts around
the globe can be found exclusively on the Bloomberg terminal.
If you enjoy the pod, please leave us a five
star review on Apple or Spotify. Today we're joined by
Brandon Solano, the CEO of Rave Restaurant Group. Rave is
(00:35):
the parent company of Pizza Inn and Pie five, two
franchise pizza chains, with one hundred and seventeen domestic restaurants
and twenty international stores at the end of calendar one Q.
Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Brandon, Hey, Mike, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
You got it, man. We've had some overlaps, so you
worked at Domino's and Wendy's while I was covering those companies.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
It was a great run. Mean big companies, right, a
lot more scale than what we have here. I've got
a lot more degrees of freedom here than you know
that I had here, which is both good and bad.
So you know, there's no guardrails and we're public. We're
listed on the Nasdaq, so I tell the team. You know,
the good news is we if we do a good job,
we're public. Everyone will know. If we do a terrible job,
you know, it's the bad news, everyone will know. So
(01:16):
we gotter do a good job.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, ticker r a ve for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
At Domino's you you were part of that impressive turnaround.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah. Well actually I was famous, Mike. I got on TV.
You know, like you us famous guy's got to got
to stick together. But you know, Andy Warhol said, you know,
my fifteen minutes are up, brother, So yeah, it was.
It was great. I was the head chef. I was
VP of Innovation there, so you know, we rolled out
a whole bunch of innovation that you know made sense
with our strategy and day parts and consumers and all
those things occasions. But the big thing was the new
(01:50):
and improved pizza in twenty ten. You know, that really
blew the doors off, and you know, created about four
billion dollars in shareholder values. So you know, there's you
know a lot of success. I'm really happy for, you know,
for the franchisees and all the folks involved.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
It was fun, yeah, I'm sure. And now Domino's is
a competitor. What initially drew you to the rave gig.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
There was you know, it was a CEO gig. So
I was chief marketing officer. I was CMO at Wendy's
and you know Papa Murphy's and uh, you know che
is to be CEO of a publicly listed company, although
it was small, like that's kind of cool, like you know,
get to have earnings calls and you know where the
big suit and you know, pretend to be important and
I you know, might EGO really love that? But you know,
(02:35):
this is a brand that if it more public, private
equity would have scooped it up. You know, Pizza In is,
you know, a sixty plus year old brand has deep, deep,
what we call laytent equity. You know, Pizza Inn was
at one time the number two pizza brand behind Pizza Okay.
This is a massive, sleeping giant. And what appealed to
me was the ability to come in and you know,
(02:56):
revitalize that with you know, the latent equity that that
we have. There's a lot of pizza chains. You know,
there's new ones popping up every day. There's you know,
somebody from every part of the world and they show
up you know, and but for us, people remember, you know,
in our footprint which was most of the US. Now
we're mostly just southeast, but you know, they remember Pizza
(03:17):
In and they you know, they want us to come back.
When we open a new store, we post on social media,
you know, hey, we're opening a new store in Yukon, Oklahoma.
We just opened. We get all kinds of from all
over like, oh come back. We missed Pizza In. So
really drew me. You know, PI five was a player
in the fast casual pizza space. That was interesting to me.
I hadn't you know, done anything there and that's been
(03:38):
you know, just a really rough category for you know,
all the players involved, us included, but there was I thought,
an awful lot to be done. And upside to a company.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Like Rave cool, how do you define the competitive set
for Pizza in and who is its largest competitor in
most of its markets?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So you know a lot of our stores are more
rural and we might have a Dominoes or we might
have a pizza hut, you know, in our in our market,
I think people always want to go with the model
that looks closest. So hey, CCS, you know, well, CC's
is a pizza buffet, but they don't really operate in
our market. So, you know, we track everybody, you know,
everybody who's public. I know, you can buy the data
(04:18):
to you know, track everybody. We can't afford to do that.
We don't do that, So we wait for earning season
and see how everybody else did. But we tracked pizza,
but we tracked broader than that. Mostly we've been tracking
against Chipotle. You know, Chapotli's having a tough time of it,
but you know, Chipotle was the industry standard, and you know,
I don't. One of the games marketing people play is
(04:39):
to define the category really small, so you have a
big share and you look really good. I like to
have a category to be really big, so we have
a small share, there's more upside. And I like to
rank us against the toughest competitors. And you know, that's
really been Chipotle for the last several years. I've been
here almost six years, and so you know, we're always
taking a look at you know, like sam store sales,
(05:00):
same store traffic, how's Chipotle do it? Obviously they have
you know, I think they spill more on the floor
in a day than we sell in the year. They've
got such scale, they're so big. But you know, we
track you know, who's growing store account who's not. We
start at pizza and then we expand out to you know,
who's really doing well.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, and I mean that makes sense because you're a
buffet concept, right, you have buffet stores. You have Delco
stores too, I read, but you have a lot of
buffet stores, So it would make sense anywhere you're going
to sit down and eat would be a competitor. It's
interesting that you mentioned Chipotle because they recently released a
new family meal. It seems to me that they're going
(05:40):
after some pizza occasions there.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
What do you think, Yeah, I mean I think I
think it's interesting. I just saw it right, it's brand new.
I think it's kind of fun to be able to
kind of create your own, build your own, you know,
kind of Chipotle kid. What, I don't know that that's
how consumers want to use Chipotle. Maybe they do. Okay,
Chipotle's got a lot of resources and a lot of research,
and I won't from the outside second guess what they're doing.
(06:04):
They've been ridiculously successful, but you know, it's a it's
a change in the use education, you know, how that
brand is used. That's always a risk, but you know
there's a lot of upside too, if you know you
can enter a new date part or you know, change
or the use education occasion. I think you know you
can do well. But you know, certainly, you know there's
a delivery aspect to it. They've been, you know, had
(06:25):
a really solid diet in business when everybody was you know,
so relyant on the drive through. But you know, I think,
you know, it's hard to bet against those guys. They're
you know, they're not doing what they want to, but
you know they're a fantastic brand.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Pizza in has multiple formats, as I mentioned earlier, which
ones are you prioritizing in the United States?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, it's it's very clear. We've been very clear about this.
We prioritize our pizza in buffets. So you know, the
buffet concept is you know, it's not a unique concept,
but it's a differentiated concept. There aren't a lot of
buffets around, if we will, we have a few del
Co stores, we have a handful of Express stores, which
are inconvenience stores. And you know, in terms of volume,
(07:08):
in terms of you know, brand impression, you know, the
Delco stores are are not my favorite. You know, I've
I've closed, you know, a couple of dozen of them
since I got here. When renewals come up, I don't
renew them. I've got you know, one operator in Arkansas
who does such a great job, you know, and the
folks who are doing a great job, we have an
obligation to them, We have a franchise agreement with them.
(07:28):
We honor that, but when they're over, we've not been
renewing them, with the exception of one operator who's just fantastic.
But you know, we're we're a buffet concept and that's
where the volume is. You know, our average unit volume
is over a million, four which is very high for pizza.
And you know, we feel great about it. We've got
you know, four and five million dollar buffet restaurant, so
(07:50):
we feel great about it. We're opportunistic about carry out,
about delivery. We're up on all the third party delivery services,
you know where we have them. I mean, we have
some really rural stores. By going a store tour, I
might be two hours without cell phone service in the
middle of the North Carolina mountains. Some of our locations
(08:11):
don't have access most do, and where we do, we're
you know, we're in door Dash and Uber Eats and grub.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Up very cool and PI five you kind of alluded
to the you know, the struggles of the entire casual
fast casual pizza market. Is there any other things going
on there in terms of the underperformance versus pizza in
and what are your plans to improve seam source sales there.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, I think there's a big issue with the entire
you know, fast casual pizza category, and you know Pie
five is not immune to that. So, you know, there's
a value issue relative to QSR pizza. You know, the
pizza is better, but you know, so far the category
is not demonstrated that it's that much better that you know,
the volumes are high. When those stores started, they were
(08:59):
very very high volume, and so the rents are really high.
And so when you have you know, rent in a
restaurant should be about nine percent of sales. The fast
casual pizza restaurants volume is not you know, low for pizza, right,
they're they're in the you know, ten to fourteen thousand
dollars range, but their real estate, the real estate strategy
(09:20):
for fast casual pizza has been, you know difficult when
when you'll you know, these things came out and they're
doing thirty thousand, forty thousand, you can afford a ten
thousand dollars a month rent. You know, we have stores
next to Chipotle, and you know, Chipotle's doing four times
a volume and we're paying the same rent. So you know,
we've got rent issues, to be honest, And I think
(09:40):
you know, the other players, Blaze and Mod and the others,
are experiencing similar issues. You know, Domino's had lower volume
for years, but they had really terrible real estate that
was cheap because they were a delivery concept and you know,
nobody knew where the store was. And you know when
I was there, we changed a lot of that. But
you know, I think the problem is you have very
average volumes in fast casual pizza and you have you know,
(10:04):
a locations with very high rent, which is you know,
not a great model. So you know, we've been working
to get sales up at you know, at our Pig
five locations. We've retooled the menu, we have a lot
of great new new products, but we continue to lose
store account. You know, PI five had one hundred when
I when at one point at the peak. Okay, they
had fifteen when I started. Today we have seventeen, and
(10:28):
so it's been you know, it's been a tough road.
The stores that are operating at a high level, our
stores for PI five are doing doing pretty well. We've
got stores that are copy positive, you know, that have
high volume, that are doing great. If you're an average
or below average operator, it's you know, it's difficult, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
And for the entire chain, Pizza in UH and PI five,
do you plan on closing any more US stores over
the next eighteen months? And you know, when do you
think you can get back to unit growth?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
So unit growth on PI five is probably a long
ways off, to be honest, So we don't give guidance.
We're public, so I have to be careful for you know,
reg FD and all that sort of thing. So you know,
we're really comment on that Pizza In on the other hand,
Now that's a brand that had eight hundred units and
you know, and I really only when I talk I
count buffet units. You know, we're at eighty today and
(11:23):
we've had four years of consecutive years of growing unitcount
after twenty four years, Mike of declines it's hard to
stay in business when you lose store count twenty four
consecutive years in a row. But we now have four
years in a row of growth and you know we've
had we've been in the one two percent growth range.
It's really time for Pizza In to show, you know,
(11:44):
much much stronger growth and really bang up some units.
And we've done a great job of signing deals and
we're starting to get some real estate going. And you know,
the third leg of that stol is you actually have
to open stores and sell pizza. And we have not
yet demonstrated that we can do that at scale. I
think we can. I think we'll learn a few things.
But you know, there's probably some investor sitting on the
(12:05):
sidelines that say, hey, you know, I'm from Missouri, and
I think they're right. You know, until we demonstrate, hey, listen,
we can put up you know, double digit news stores
in a year. You know, we have not yet proven that.
I think we can do it. It's our challenge to
do it, part of our strategy to do it, and
I'm accountable to the board to make sure that happens.
So we better get that done.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
All right, Very cool? How are the AUVs coming in
at these new units versus that one point four.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
They're a little bit lower, but they're they're pretty strong.
You know, we just launched an amazing new value offer.
By the way, you said, hey, who do you consider
your competitors? Everybody except Chili's makes my deck for the board. Okay,
I'm not putting those guys on my chart. I've got
right here at this chart. This is four year comp sales.
The red is US and then you know you can see,
(12:54):
you know, everybody else kind of in there, but Chili's
is strangely missing. Sick of hearing about those guys. You know,
Hawkman's doing a great job. You know, those good good
for those guys. But you know, listen, we we're happy
with with where we're at. And we just launched this
amazing value offer called I Ate at Pizza in and
(13:16):
this started. I've got a daughter, hey, Lane, she's a
freshman at the University of Texas. She's down in Austin
and she just left. You know, I won't I won't
tell anyone, keeping a secret, but you know she called
crying yesterday like, oh my god, I miss home, which
is amazing testament as a parent, Like when I left home,
I was so glad. So so my daughter Elaine is
(13:37):
down at the University of Texas and you know, she's
taking the SAT and she's, you know, in her senior year.
And I say, hey, how'd you do, how'd you do
in your test? And she'd say, oh, I ate, I
ate and left no crumbs. And I'm you know, listen,
I've raised four teenagers. I'm like, what the hell you know?
So I go look up I ate them. Okay, I
get it. So we're working on we need a value deal,
you know, we need a value deal, Like like yesterday,
(14:00):
We've done so many things that I'm proud of here,
but you know, entering my sixth year, we don't have
a massive killer value deal. I brought the four for
four from Wendy's to market, okay, the Domino's new and improved,
you know, boom. Like I'm used to having big killer
value ideas that you know, drive traffic, drive profits, drive
the stock price. I haven't done it here, and so
(14:22):
you know, I'm like, we got to have a new
value offer. And we picked eight dollars eight dollars buffet
all day, you know, Monday through Friday. So we kind
of saved the weekends, kept our price point there, and
we put it in the store and tested it and
it blew the lid off. We're hitting chili numbers. So
we're thirty percent sales growth, forty percent traffic growth, comp growth.
It was just amazing. And so you know, our new
(14:44):
stores that open, they tend to open really high and
then they kind of, you know, they kind of fade
a little bit, and some of them we've we've launched
the I eight program. You know, we had a store
doing eight thousand dollars that you know, had opened and
you know, it closed and there was trouble with the
owners and it transfer and every every unit, every chain
has units like this, and I'm like, damn, we just
(15:05):
opened this store. And so we cleaned up the operation.
We got a big bump out of that. We then
launched I eight. That's the stores doing mid twenties. And so,
you know, there are times people say, oh, you know,
this doesn't work, Maybe this town's just not right for it.
Our concept is solid. It offers great value to families.
If we run it right and can offer a value,
(15:25):
we're gonna print money. We're gonna do great and so
you know, We feel good about them. You know, we're listening.
Every every chain closes, you know, a couple of units
every year. You know, you've got real estate issues or
something else. But you know, you know, Pizza in we're
four years of growth and we're really focused on like
(15:47):
strong growth.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, I got some follow ups that seems to our
sales chart look pretty good. What you know, this is
audio only, so what what are the numbers that you
put up?
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, so this is four year comps four years, So
this is kind of not quite pre COVID. But listen,
pre COVID our AUVs At pizza inter up forty seven percent.
So take COVID out of it. There's some chains might
that benefited from COVID right that, you know, the delivery
concepts in particular, they got big bumps out of COVID.
You know, we're a buffinteffet kipped our ass. I mean,
(16:22):
it was illegal for us to be open in some states.
I had a franchise e sue the state of New
Mexico and go all the way to the Supreme Court
of New Mexico where we lost. You know, it's been tough,
but you know, we show four year Sames store sales.
Pizza in up fifty seven percent, next one on my chart. Now,
who knows if I included four, if I included Chili's,
maybe four year might not be. Who knows, because you
(16:44):
know they've they've done so much gross recently. I'm gonna
I'm gonna add it and see what happens, and if
it if it makes me look bad, I'll take it
out before the board meeting.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
But Wingstock got some data to I got some data
to share. Yeah, it's Wingstock, Texas Roadhouse and Chili's are
the ones.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yep, wing stops up for seven point seven. So you
know you said we're audio only, but you know there's
there's US at fifty seven last four years, Chipotle's at
thirty nine, McDonald's at thirty one, Starbucks at seventeen, Wendy's
at fourteen, Domino's at eleven, Papa John's, you know, the
last two are KFC and Pizza Hut down one, down
(17:19):
three in the last four years. Like what, you know,
everybody loves yum Man investors love yum You know, Taco
Taco Bell's done well, but KFC and Pizza Hut in
particular are a hot mess. But you know, what we
said you asked about, you know, the competitors. We're really
focused on running our game. You know, like there's what
the other guys do, and then there's what we do.
(17:41):
If we offer a great value. You know, we're polite
and our stores are clean.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
We're going to have success, good stuff. And who's opening
the stores? Is it all existing franchises right now?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
It's new and externals actually, which hadn't happened in forever.
So you know, the good news about running a smaller
concept is I have a lot of degrees of freedom.
The bad news is, you know, the resources. It takes
me forever to you know, to get things done because
you know, like I did a new store image, I
had to go hire an agency, and you know, do
a new store image, I had to put the damn
(18:13):
thing on layaway. Mike, all right, this year we're gonna
do like the outside, you know, next year we'll do
the inside. You know, it took a long time, but
we're reimaging our existing stores, which they absolutely looked like. Hell,
I haven't seen a worse you know, uh looking flee
to stores in my life. And now we've got ten
million dollars in franchise E Capital going in to reimage
(18:34):
our existing pizza INDs. You know, we love the image.
They look great. And then the new stores are opening
of course, uh you know in the new image. So
you know, there's there's a lot of good things happening
for us.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
And the franchises are footing that entire bill for the
pre image.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yes, absolutely, Oh that's good.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, I mean that's I mean, they're looking they're they're
looking at the future constructively, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
And they've you know, they've really uh you know, they've
really embraced it. I mean, you know, I thought I
thought it might be a fight. You know, there's a
few folks who you know, aren't aren't so sure, but
buy and large folks have jumped on and we're getting
good results. You know, we're showing you know, sales growth
coming out of the new store reimage. You know that's
ranging from you know, basically none to you know, eighteen
(19:19):
nineteen percent. We're averaging averaging in about six percent. I'd
like to see it be higher. But you know a
lot of the cost is deferred maintenance, you know, just
things that we probably should have done anyway. But you know,
there's there's a real renewal happening, and you know, external
franchise ease are coming in. You know, I've got a
franchise development team now I have a team of two.
(19:41):
I used to have one. I have. You know, I
got a website now real on a scott website. We
can go and learn about franchising with pizza in. I
really wanted to get the model right before we decided, hey,
let's go try and sell this thing. I really want
to start reimaging stores. Before you know, we went to
go try and sell this thing, we had an external
come in a few years ago. We weren't really soliciting.
(20:01):
They said, hey, we're interested in franchising. He said, okay,
well you know you want to visit some stores. Sure,
And we're like, oh man, Mike, our stores look so bad,
you know, let's send them here and send them there. Well,
you know, we have some that look good. And of
course they went to the ones that we didn't suggest
they go to, and they call us back and said,
you know, we don't want to be part of your system.
And frankly, I don't blame them. I mean, you know,
(20:23):
when when you take a look at a franchise business
and the stores look bad and you know, the place
doesn't look good. You know, I'm not sure I want
a franchise with that group either. Now we've got folks
that run around to see stores and say, your stores
look brand new. You know, your sales look good. You know,
we have an item nineteen in our FDD now which
lays out profitability. We never had that before. It's usually
(20:43):
the subject of a lot of litigation, so a lot
of franchise ors don't put it in. We decided we
believe in the model, the numbers are right, We're going
to put them in. And you know, we got folks
coming in saying, hey, you know we want a franchise
with you. We're advertising, we're investing in it. In fact,
I had a guy sigh, I just signed a franchise
this week in Warner Robbins, Georgia. Uh we've got you know,
(21:05):
a new store coming there in the next probably six
to nine months. And uh they were really happy and they're,
you know, thinking about signing. And then they heard about
our deal with Doctor Pepper Fansville and the SEC. Now
these guys are in Georgia. You know, we're we're an
SEC brand, and uh, we just signed a deal. I mean,
little Pizza Inn has the sec marks. I'm over the moon.
(21:25):
I mean, listen, I went to Notre Dame. Okay, we're
not in a conference. I don't care, you know, like
I'm in the Pizza Inn conference. I'm so excited, uh
that we were able to secure these marks. And these
guys were Georgia fans and they're like, oh man, we're signing,
We're in. So you know, there's momentum, you know, when
your stores look good and you're you know, you've got
great marketing and you're you know, sales are good. You know,
people want a franchise with you. And that's what's starting
(21:46):
to happen to us. And it's weird. It's new, you know,
like you know, nobody wanted to date us. We couldn't,
you know, we couldn't get a date, you know, to
save our lives. And now you know, our phones are ringing.
It's great.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
That's awesome, man, exciting and I love hearing the past
in your voice. It's it's great. Are there any overseas
markets you have your sights on?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Yeah, well we've got a great partner in Riaut Saudi Arabia.
So I was there I don't know about eighteen months ago.
You know, just a great experience. Fantastic partners. They're called
Blessing Basket Company. They have a chain of like gas
stations and auto repair. They've got a hundred locations and
they put together a plan to bring a lots and
(22:27):
lots of pizza inns to the Middle East. And so
we just opened our ninth, maybe our tenth. They're opening
a store every other month over there. So you know,
the Mid East is is you know, doing really great
for us. You know, we we you know, are expanding
to some neighboring countries with them. But yeah, you know
we're we get my international guy's amazing. He's about he
(22:50):
looks like Yoda. He's like a thousand years old. I
love the guy. And he's just a killer, Like he's
just the energizer bunny. He flies to the Mid East
and coach and I said, Roger, what are you doing?
It's like, well, I need to save the company money.
And you know, he's just an amazing guy. And the
franchises love him. And you know he's he's always signing
(23:11):
some weird new country. You know, we actually we had
you know, stores all over He's trying to sign Matta
Gascar right now. So I'm like, okay, like I saw
the movie. You know, I love Chris Rock as a zebra,
you know, but like, you know, what's the deal. So
you know, it's opportunistic. We don't have a big international team,
(23:33):
but international for US as opportunistic. And you know, I
think we're putting up some pretty good numbers over there.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Cool, And did you you know, did that Middle East
business suffer last year? And and how is it performing
this year?
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, well, I mean listen, there's you know, conflict in
the Mid East. It's you know, it's not new news.
We actually had a restaurant in Palestine, we had a
pizza inn in the West Bank, you know, and that
that closed, you know, and it's not reopened. You know.
It's a you know, tough, tough situation for you know,
the folks over there. But yeah, I mean it's it's
(24:13):
always difficult. International trademarks. You know, you've got international trademark
in fringers. We end up with you know a lot
of legal issues. But you know that's that's just international business.
So sales are good, units are growing, but it's always
it feels like whackable you know, we got like the
guys in Riot, our Saudi partners are awesome. And then
(24:36):
you know, we got another another group in Oman that
just said, you know, we're going to close, and you
know they're going to close you know, their stores and
so now, hey, you know, guys from from Saudi interested
in Oman. Like it's pretty close by mid eas standards.
That's a big area over there, right, it's only a
five hour flight to Oman. You guys should do it.
And so they're working on it, and you know, but
(24:58):
it's you know, I think with the partners that we
have now, I have a lot of faith in their stability.
They're very measured. It's fast growth, but it's very measured.
They continue to have success. So you know, I'd love
for you know, our folks in in you know, Riad
to have you know, basically regional you know, presence. We're
(25:18):
doing great with them.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Good stuff. Let's flip back to the US. What are
the demographics are your customers and what are you seeing
from them this year?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, so you know, our demographics are blue collar, you know,
the racial demographics are you know, more black and white,
you know, kind of less Hispanic, with the exception of Texas,
so again we're kind of sec country, but you know,
our demographics tend to be you know, middle income, and
so you hear everybody, you know, you hear everybody talking
(25:48):
about you no geez, the you know, the lower income
customer is suffering, and you know this is really tough,
and you know we haven't seen it. And you know,
I'll tell you what concerns me is the price of
fuel because we have you know, our stores are spread out.
You know, there's not a Pizza In on every corner.
If you're going to come to Pizza In. You know
a lot of our people drive twenty plus minutes, okay
(26:10):
to a Pizza in, And when the price of gas
goes up, I get nervous that you know that they're
going to say, you know, Pizza In's a great deal,
but it's going to cost me ten bucks in gas
to get there and back. You know, maybe I won't
want to do that. But we're offering such a great
value and it's such a family friendly kind of place
that you know, we're continuing to see traffic and sales growth.
(26:30):
So our primary target is families with kids under twelve.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Do you have kids, Mike, I do. He's seventeen.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Okay, so when he was ten, okay, I'm sure he
you know, I don't want to speak for him. But
you know most teenagers, I know, like parents are tyrants, man. Okay,
when they're ten, you're really tyrants, right because we say, hey,
brush your teeth, do your homework, time to go to bed.
Here's what you're going to eat, like you know, it's
it's stalin esque, man. It's terrible to have parents, right,
(26:58):
they hate it. And so when they get to Pizza In,
all bets are off, it's freedom for for kids. They
walk up, they serve themselves. They're not waiting for someone.
They grab a plate and they go at it. And
there's pizza, pasta salad and an amazing dessert bar that
the kids just love. So you know, we're not trying
(27:18):
to drive you know, primary demand for the pizza category.
We're trying to drive selective demand for our brand. And
you know, kids love Pizza In. Parents love it because
it's easy. You know, you're not with the Krans and
the Tic tac Toe trying to wait for a win's dinner,
going to get here. It's a very family friendly, you
know kind of place, very rooted in community. We have deep,
(27:40):
deep roots in the communities that we operate in. In
some ways, it's like the community coming together. You know,
we all show up at the buffet and we all
eat from the same buffet. There's a real you know,
togetherness to the pizza inn vibe that I just love.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
All Right, So this is what I you know, I
saved it for last. I've been dying ask you about
the Bambian Friends pizza.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
You know, I had that down here. I knew that
was coming. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
I talked to if you could talk about like how
that originated and the marketing plan behind it, and I
saw that you brought it back last year and he
plans to bring it back again.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah. So you know, in my in my marketing you
know kind of resume, I've had some really outlandish, bizarre ideas.
You know. One was the I was the marketing director
for Reese's Peanut Butter cup. I brought out the Reese's
Elvis cup, right Elvis like peanut butter banana sandwich. We
had a you know, put a layer of banana cream
in a Reese's cup and just killed it with the
(28:38):
Elvis cup. And so it's one of the things I'm
kind of known for is these offbeat ideas, and you know,
I always end up with somebody from HR sending me
for drug testing for some reason or another. But yeah,
we're sitting around. Really it was born on a you know,
of our franchise's. I got a franchise e in Arkansas,
and you know, I call him and he's like, oh wait,
I'm out turkey hunting. You know, I'll take your call,
(29:00):
but I got to be quiet. You know, our franchisees
are these like, you know, good old boys, and you know,
so a lot of our customers are. And I said,
you know what if we did like a like a
wild game pizza. That's how it started. It was wild
game and you know, we got to hold of some
suppliers and it's hard to find you know, wild game,
you know, pepperoni and wild game sausage, but we managed
(29:22):
to find it. We worked with our ad agency and
they came up with this idea. They called it the
Bambi Pizza, and I mean the board had a fit.
My board went bananas on this idea. And the first
version was like baby Bambi, like you know Bambi as
a child, and the Board's like you can't do this.
We're gonna you know, we're gonna have like you know,
(29:42):
protests at the home office, and you know, oh my god.
And so I went to the agency and I said,
you guys got to you got to revise it. And
you know, they're like, well, you're gonna kill the idea, Like,
we can't really water it down. So what they did
is they made Bamby an adult and they put like
antlers on them. And then we ran it. I told
the board, hey, look we changed it. It's not a
baby anymore. And the thing went crazy. We sold out
(30:05):
like right away, you know. We did it in a
subset of our stores and some of our more rural stores.
It went, it went absolutely crazy. Of course, we got
protested by you know, the animal rights guys or whatever.
But we put up an installation outdoor billboard where you know,
and it's we have these like thought bubbles and it
says Bambi saying we taste delicious, you know, and you know,
(30:26):
as Bambi and his friends, you know, the wild wild
boar and all that sort of thing. But we sent
this in. We ended up winning an Obie Award, this
outdoor advertising award. We beat Disney and Netflix for the
best installation because we had this billboard and then we
put these like you know, like three D Deer and
(30:46):
Elk out in front of it, and we had them
all looking up at the billboard with them on it.
And so you know, we know our customer. You know, listen,
I moved here from Portland, Oregon. You know that would
not fly in Portland, Oregon. But guess what, they love
it in Arkansas and in Texas and you know in
the Carolina is where we did it. So you got
to know your customer. That's probably not a great idea
(31:07):
for every brand, but we did it. It was fun
as hell, we won an award, and you know, and
the board didn't fire me, so it all all ended well.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Awesome, man, very cool. I think that's a great spot
to wrap it up. Thanks for doing this, Brandon, and
thanks to the audience for tuning in. If you like
to learn more about Rave Restaurant Group and you don't
have a Bloomberg terminal, visit their investor relations page at
raverg dot com. If you liked our discussion, please share
it with your friends and colleagues. Check back soon for
(31:38):
another interview on chopping it up,
Welcome to Chopping It Up. I'm your host, Mike Hanlon,
the senior Restaurant and Food Service analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
Our research and that a bi's five hundred analysts around
the globe can be found exclusively on the Bloomberg terminal.
If you enjoy the pod, please leave us a five
star review on Apple or Spotify. Today we're joined by
Brandon Solano, the CEO of Rave Restaurant Group. Rave is
(00:35):
the parent company of Pizza Inn and Pie five, two
franchise pizza chains, with one hundred and seventeen domestic restaurants
and twenty international stores at the end of calendar one Q.
Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Brandon, Hey, Mike, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
You got it, man. We've had some overlaps, so you
worked at Domino's and Wendy's while I was covering those companies.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
It was a great run. Mean big companies, right, a
lot more scale than what we have here. I've got
a lot more degrees of freedom here than you know
that I had here, which is both good and bad.
So you know, there's no guardrails and we're public. We're
listed on the Nasdaq, so I tell the team. You know,
the good news is we if we do a good job,
we're public. Everyone will know. If we do a terrible job,
you know, it's the bad news, everyone will know. So
(01:16):
we gotter do a good job.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, ticker r a ve for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
At Domino's you you were part of that impressive turnaround.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah. Well actually I was famous, Mike. I got on TV.
You know, like you us famous guy's got to got
to stick together. But you know, Andy Warhol said, you know,
my fifteen minutes are up, brother, So yeah, it was.
It was great. I was the head chef. I was
VP of Innovation there, so you know, we rolled out
a whole bunch of innovation that you know made sense
with our strategy and day parts and consumers and all
those things occasions. But the big thing was the new
(01:50):
and improved pizza in twenty ten. You know, that really
blew the doors off, and you know, created about four
billion dollars in shareholder values. So you know, there's you
know a lot of success. I'm really happy for, you know,
for the franchisees and all the folks involved.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
It was fun, yeah, I'm sure. And now Domino's is
a competitor. What initially drew you to the rave gig.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
There was you know, it was a CEO gig. So
I was chief marketing officer. I was CMO at Wendy's
and you know Papa Murphy's and uh, you know che
is to be CEO of a publicly listed company, although
it was small, like that's kind of cool, like you know,
get to have earnings calls and you know where the
big suit and you know, pretend to be important and
I you know, might EGO really love that? But you know,
(02:35):
this is a brand that if it more public, private
equity would have scooped it up. You know, Pizza In is,
you know, a sixty plus year old brand has deep, deep,
what we call laytent equity. You know, Pizza Inn was
at one time the number two pizza brand behind Pizza Okay.
This is a massive, sleeping giant. And what appealed to
me was the ability to come in and you know,
(02:56):
revitalize that with you know, the latent equity that that
we have. There's a lot of pizza chains. You know,
there's new ones popping up every day. There's you know,
somebody from every part of the world and they show
up you know, and but for us, people remember, you know,
in our footprint which was most of the US. Now
we're mostly just southeast, but you know, they remember Pizza
(03:17):
In and they you know, they want us to come back.
When we open a new store, we post on social media,
you know, hey, we're opening a new store in Yukon, Oklahoma.
We just opened. We get all kinds of from all
over like, oh come back. We missed Pizza In. So
really drew me. You know, PI five was a player
in the fast casual pizza space. That was interesting to me.
I hadn't you know, done anything there and that's been
(03:38):
you know, just a really rough category for you know,
all the players involved, us included, but there was I thought,
an awful lot to be done. And upside to a company.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Like Rave cool, how do you define the competitive set
for Pizza in and who is its largest competitor in
most of its markets?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So you know a lot of our stores are more
rural and we might have a Dominoes or we might
have a pizza hut, you know, in our in our market,
I think people always want to go with the model
that looks closest. So hey, CCS, you know, well, CC's
is a pizza buffet, but they don't really operate in
our market. So, you know, we track everybody, you know,
everybody who's public. I know, you can buy the data
(04:18):
to you know, track everybody. We can't afford to do that.
We don't do that, So we wait for earning season
and see how everybody else did. But we tracked pizza,
but we tracked broader than that. Mostly we've been tracking
against Chipotle. You know, Chapotli's having a tough time of it,
but you know, Chipotle was the industry standard, and you know,
I don't. One of the games marketing people play is
(04:39):
to define the category really small, so you have a
big share and you look really good. I like to
have a category to be really big, so we have
a small share, there's more upside. And I like to
rank us against the toughest competitors. And you know, that's
really been Chipotle for the last several years. I've been
here almost six years, and so you know, we're always
taking a look at you know, like sam store sales,
(05:00):
same store traffic, how's Chipotle do it? Obviously they have
you know, I think they spill more on the floor
in a day than we sell in the year. They've
got such scale, they're so big. But you know, we
track you know, who's growing store account who's not. We
start at pizza and then we expand out to you know,
who's really doing well.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, and I mean that makes sense because you're a
buffet concept, right, you have buffet stores. You have Delco
stores too, I read, but you have a lot of
buffet stores, So it would make sense anywhere you're going
to sit down and eat would be a competitor. It's
interesting that you mentioned Chipotle because they recently released a
new family meal. It seems to me that they're going
(05:40):
after some pizza occasions there.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
What do you think, Yeah, I mean I think I
think it's interesting. I just saw it right, it's brand new.
I think it's kind of fun to be able to
kind of create your own, build your own, you know,
kind of Chipotle kid. What, I don't know that that's
how consumers want to use Chipotle. Maybe they do. Okay,
Chipotle's got a lot of resources and a lot of research,
and I won't from the outside second guess what they're doing.
(06:04):
They've been ridiculously successful, but you know, it's a it's
a change in the use education, you know, how that
brand is used. That's always a risk, but you know
there's a lot of upside too, if you know you
can enter a new date part or you know, change
or the use education occasion. I think you know you
can do well. But you know, certainly, you know there's
a delivery aspect to it. They've been, you know, had
(06:25):
a really solid diet in business when everybody was you know,
so relyant on the drive through. But you know, I think,
you know, it's hard to bet against those guys. They're
you know, they're not doing what they want to, but
you know they're a fantastic brand.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Pizza in has multiple formats, as I mentioned earlier, which
ones are you prioritizing in the United States?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, it's it's very clear. We've been very clear about this.
We prioritize our pizza in buffets. So you know, the
buffet concept is you know, it's not a unique concept,
but it's a differentiated concept. There aren't a lot of
buffets around, if we will, we have a few del
Co stores, we have a handful of Express stores, which
are inconvenience stores. And you know, in terms of volume,
(07:08):
in terms of you know, brand impression, you know, the
Delco stores are are not my favorite. You know, I've
I've closed, you know, a couple of dozen of them
since I got here. When renewals come up, I don't
renew them. I've got you know, one operator in Arkansas
who does such a great job, you know, and the
folks who are doing a great job, we have an
obligation to them, We have a franchise agreement with them.
(07:28):
We honor that, but when they're over, we've not been
renewing them, with the exception of one operator who's just fantastic.
But you know, we're we're a buffet concept and that's
where the volume is. You know, our average unit volume
is over a million, four which is very high for pizza.
And you know, we feel great about it. We've got
you know, four and five million dollar buffet restaurant, so
(07:50):
we feel great about it. We're opportunistic about carry out,
about delivery. We're up on all the third party delivery services,
you know where we have them. I mean, we have
some really rural stores. By going a store tour, I
might be two hours without cell phone service in the
middle of the North Carolina mountains. Some of our locations
(08:11):
don't have access most do, and where we do, we're
you know, we're in door Dash and Uber Eats and grub.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Up very cool and PI five you kind of alluded
to the you know, the struggles of the entire casual
fast casual pizza market. Is there any other things going
on there in terms of the underperformance versus pizza in
and what are your plans to improve seam source sales there.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, I think there's a big issue with the entire
you know, fast casual pizza category, and you know Pie
five is not immune to that. So, you know, there's
a value issue relative to QSR pizza. You know, the
pizza is better, but you know, so far the category
is not demonstrated that it's that much better that you know,
the volumes are high. When those stores started, they were
(08:59):
very very high volume, and so the rents are really high.
And so when you have you know, rent in a
restaurant should be about nine percent of sales. The fast
casual pizza restaurants volume is not you know, low for pizza, right,
they're they're in the you know, ten to fourteen thousand
dollars range, but their real estate, the real estate strategy
(09:20):
for fast casual pizza has been, you know difficult when
when you'll you know, these things came out and they're
doing thirty thousand, forty thousand, you can afford a ten
thousand dollars a month rent. You know, we have stores
next to Chipotle, and you know, Chipotle's doing four times
a volume and we're paying the same rent. So you know,
we've got rent issues, to be honest, And I think
(09:40):
you know, the other players, Blaze and Mod and the others,
are experiencing similar issues. You know, Domino's had lower volume
for years, but they had really terrible real estate that
was cheap because they were a delivery concept and you know,
nobody knew where the store was. And you know when
I was there, we changed a lot of that. But
you know, I think the problem is you have very
average volumes in fast casual pizza and you have you know,
(10:04):
a locations with very high rent, which is you know,
not a great model. So you know, we've been working
to get sales up at you know, at our Pig
five locations. We've retooled the menu, we have a lot
of great new new products, but we continue to lose
store account. You know, PI five had one hundred when
I when at one point at the peak. Okay, they
had fifteen when I started. Today we have seventeen, and
(10:28):
so it's been you know, it's been a tough road.
The stores that are operating at a high level, our
stores for PI five are doing doing pretty well. We've
got stores that are copy positive, you know, that have
high volume, that are doing great. If you're an average
or below average operator, it's you know, it's difficult, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
And for the entire chain, Pizza in UH and PI five,
do you plan on closing any more US stores over
the next eighteen months? And you know, when do you
think you can get back to unit growth?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
So unit growth on PI five is probably a long
ways off, to be honest, So we don't give guidance.
We're public, so I have to be careful for you know,
reg FD and all that sort of thing. So you know,
we're really comment on that Pizza In on the other hand,
Now that's a brand that had eight hundred units and
you know, and I really only when I talk I
count buffet units. You know, we're at eighty today and
(11:23):
we've had four years of consecutive years of growing unitcount
after twenty four years, Mike of declines it's hard to
stay in business when you lose store count twenty four
consecutive years in a row. But we now have four
years in a row of growth and you know we've
had we've been in the one two percent growth range.
It's really time for Pizza In to show, you know,
(11:44):
much much stronger growth and really bang up some units.
And we've done a great job of signing deals and
we're starting to get some real estate going. And you know,
the third leg of that stol is you actually have
to open stores and sell pizza. And we have not
yet demonstrated that we can do that at scale. I
think we can. I think we'll learn a few things.
But you know, there's probably some investor sitting on the
(12:05):
sidelines that say, hey, you know, I'm from Missouri, and
I think they're right. You know, until we demonstrate, hey, listen,
we can put up you know, double digit news stores
in a year. You know, we have not yet proven that.
I think we can do it. It's our challenge to
do it, part of our strategy to do it, and
I'm accountable to the board to make sure that happens.
So we better get that done.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
All right, Very cool? How are the AUVs coming in
at these new units versus that one point four.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
They're a little bit lower, but they're they're pretty strong.
You know, we just launched an amazing new value offer.
By the way, you said, hey, who do you consider
your competitors? Everybody except Chili's makes my deck for the board. Okay,
I'm not putting those guys on my chart. I've got
right here at this chart. This is four year comp sales.
The red is US and then you know you can see,
(12:54):
you know, everybody else kind of in there, but Chili's
is strangely missing. Sick of hearing about those guys. You know,
Hawkman's doing a great job. You know, those good good
for those guys. But you know, listen, we we're happy
with with where we're at. And we just launched this
amazing value offer called I Ate at Pizza in and
(13:16):
this started. I've got a daughter, hey, Lane, she's a
freshman at the University of Texas. She's down in Austin
and she just left. You know, I won't I won't
tell anyone, keeping a secret, but you know she called
crying yesterday like, oh my god, I miss home, which
is amazing testament as a parent, Like when I left home,
I was so glad. So so my daughter Elaine is
(13:37):
down at the University of Texas and you know, she's
taking the SAT and she's, you know, in her senior year.
And I say, hey, how'd you do, how'd you do
in your test? And she'd say, oh, I ate, I
ate and left no crumbs. And I'm you know, listen,
I've raised four teenagers. I'm like, what the hell you know?
So I go look up I ate them. Okay, I
get it. So we're working on we need a value deal,
you know, we need a value deal, Like like yesterday,
(14:00):
We've done so many things that I'm proud of here,
but you know, entering my sixth year, we don't have
a massive killer value deal. I brought the four for
four from Wendy's to market, okay, the Domino's new and improved,
you know, boom. Like I'm used to having big killer
value ideas that you know, drive traffic, drive profits, drive
the stock price. I haven't done it here, and so
(14:22):
you know, I'm like, we got to have a new
value offer. And we picked eight dollars eight dollars buffet
all day, you know, Monday through Friday. So we kind
of saved the weekends, kept our price point there, and
we put it in the store and tested it and
it blew the lid off. We're hitting chili numbers. So
we're thirty percent sales growth, forty percent traffic growth, comp growth.
It was just amazing. And so you know, our new
(14:44):
stores that open, they tend to open really high and
then they kind of, you know, they kind of fade
a little bit, and some of them we've we've launched
the I eight program. You know, we had a store
doing eight thousand dollars that you know, had opened and
you know, it closed and there was trouble with the
owners and it transfer and every every unit, every chain
has units like this, and I'm like, damn, we just
(15:05):
opened this store. And so we cleaned up the operation.
We got a big bump out of that. We then
launched I eight. That's the stores doing mid twenties. And so,
you know, there are times people say, oh, you know,
this doesn't work, Maybe this town's just not right for it.
Our concept is solid. It offers great value to families.
If we run it right and can offer a value,
(15:25):
we're gonna print money. We're gonna do great and so
you know, We feel good about them. You know, we're listening.
Every every chain closes, you know, a couple of units
every year. You know, you've got real estate issues or
something else. But you know, you know, Pizza in we're
four years of growth and we're really focused on like
(15:47):
strong growth.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, I got some follow ups that seems to our
sales chart look pretty good. What you know, this is
audio only, so what what are the numbers that you
put up?
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, so this is four year comps four years, So
this is kind of not quite pre COVID. But listen,
pre COVID our AUVs At pizza inter up forty seven percent.
So take COVID out of it. There's some chains might
that benefited from COVID right that, you know, the delivery
concepts in particular, they got big bumps out of COVID.
You know, we're a buffinteffet kipped our ass. I mean,
(16:22):
it was illegal for us to be open in some states.
I had a franchise e sue the state of New
Mexico and go all the way to the Supreme Court
of New Mexico where we lost. You know, it's been tough,
but you know, we show four year Sames store sales.
Pizza in up fifty seven percent, next one on my chart. Now,
who knows if I included four, if I included Chili's,
maybe four year might not be. Who knows, because you
(16:44):
know they've they've done so much gross recently. I'm gonna
I'm gonna add it and see what happens, and if
it if it makes me look bad, I'll take it
out before the board meeting.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
But Wingstock got some data to I got some data
to share. Yeah, it's Wingstock, Texas Roadhouse and Chili's are
the ones.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yep, wing stops up for seven point seven. So you
know you said we're audio only, but you know there's
there's US at fifty seven last four years, Chipotle's at
thirty nine, McDonald's at thirty one, Starbucks at seventeen, Wendy's
at fourteen, Domino's at eleven, Papa John's, you know, the
last two are KFC and Pizza Hut down one, down
(17:19):
three in the last four years. Like what, you know,
everybody loves yum Man investors love yum You know, Taco
Taco Bell's done well, but KFC and Pizza Hut in
particular are a hot mess. But you know, what we
said you asked about, you know, the competitors. We're really
focused on running our game. You know, like there's what
the other guys do, and then there's what we do.
(17:41):
If we offer a great value. You know, we're polite
and our stores are clean.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
We're going to have success, good stuff. And who's opening
the stores? Is it all existing franchises right now?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
It's new and externals actually, which hadn't happened in forever.
So you know, the good news about running a smaller
concept is I have a lot of degrees of freedom.
The bad news is, you know, the resources. It takes
me forever to you know, to get things done because
you know, like I did a new store image, I
had to go hire an agency, and you know, do
a new store image, I had to put the damn
(18:13):
thing on layaway. Mike, all right, this year we're gonna
do like the outside, you know, next year we'll do
the inside. You know, it took a long time, but
we're reimaging our existing stores, which they absolutely looked like. Hell,
I haven't seen a worse you know, uh looking flee
to stores in my life. And now we've got ten
million dollars in franchise E Capital going in to reimage
(18:34):
our existing pizza INDs. You know, we love the image.
They look great. And then the new stores are opening
of course, uh you know in the new image. So
you know, there's there's a lot of good things happening
for us.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
And the franchises are footing that entire bill for the
pre image.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yes, absolutely, Oh that's good.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, I mean that's I mean, they're looking they're they're
looking at the future constructively, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
And they've you know, they've really uh you know, they've
really embraced it. I mean, you know, I thought I
thought it might be a fight. You know, there's a
few folks who you know, aren't aren't so sure, but
buy and large folks have jumped on and we're getting
good results. You know, we're showing you know, sales growth
coming out of the new store reimage. You know that's
ranging from you know, basically none to you know, eighteen
(19:19):
nineteen percent. We're averaging averaging in about six percent. I'd
like to see it be higher. But you know a
lot of the cost is deferred maintenance, you know, just
things that we probably should have done anyway. But you know,
there's there's a real renewal happening, and you know, external
franchise ease are coming in. You know, I've got a
franchise development team now I have a team of two.
(19:41):
I used to have one. I have. You know, I
got a website now real on a scott website. We
can go and learn about franchising with pizza in. I
really wanted to get the model right before we decided, hey,
let's go try and sell this thing. I really want
to start reimaging stores. Before you know, we went to
go try and sell this thing, we had an external
come in a few years ago. We weren't really soliciting.
(20:01):
They said, hey, we're interested in franchising. He said, okay,
well you know you want to visit some stores. Sure,
And we're like, oh man, Mike, our stores look so bad,
you know, let's send them here and send them there. Well,
you know, we have some that look good. And of
course they went to the ones that we didn't suggest
they go to, and they call us back and said,
you know, we don't want to be part of your system.
And frankly, I don't blame them. I mean, you know,
(20:23):
when when you take a look at a franchise business
and the stores look bad and you know, the place
doesn't look good. You know, I'm not sure I want
a franchise with that group either. Now we've got folks
that run around to see stores and say, your stores
look brand new. You know, your sales look good. You know,
we have an item nineteen in our FDD now which
lays out profitability. We never had that before. It's usually
(20:43):
the subject of a lot of litigation, so a lot
of franchise ors don't put it in. We decided we
believe in the model, the numbers are right, We're going
to put them in. And you know, we got folks
coming in saying, hey, you know we want a franchise
with you. We're advertising, we're investing in it. In fact,
I had a guy sigh, I just signed a franchise
this week in Warner Robbins, Georgia. Uh we've got you know,
(21:05):
a new store coming there in the next probably six
to nine months. And uh they were really happy and they're,
you know, thinking about signing. And then they heard about
our deal with Doctor Pepper Fansville and the SEC. Now
these guys are in Georgia. You know, we're we're an
SEC brand, and uh, we just signed a deal. I mean,
little Pizza Inn has the sec marks. I'm over the moon.
(21:25):
I mean, listen, I went to Notre Dame. Okay, we're
not in a conference. I don't care, you know, like
I'm in the Pizza Inn conference. I'm so excited, uh
that we were able to secure these marks. And these
guys were Georgia fans and they're like, oh man, we're signing,
We're in. So you know, there's momentum, you know, when
your stores look good and you're you know, you've got
great marketing and you're you know, sales are good. You know,
people want a franchise with you. And that's what's starting
(21:46):
to happen to us. And it's weird. It's new, you know,
like you know, nobody wanted to date us. We couldn't,
you know, we couldn't get a date, you know, to
save our lives. And now you know, our phones are ringing.
It's great.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
That's awesome, man, exciting and I love hearing the past
in your voice. It's it's great. Are there any overseas
markets you have your sights on?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Yeah, well we've got a great partner in Riaut Saudi Arabia.
So I was there I don't know about eighteen months ago.
You know, just a great experience. Fantastic partners. They're called
Blessing Basket Company. They have a chain of like gas
stations and auto repair. They've got a hundred locations and
they put together a plan to bring a lots and
(22:27):
lots of pizza inns to the Middle East. And so
we just opened our ninth, maybe our tenth. They're opening
a store every other month over there. So you know,
the Mid East is is you know, doing really great
for us. You know, we we you know, are expanding
to some neighboring countries with them. But yeah, you know
we're we get my international guy's amazing. He's about he
(22:50):
looks like Yoda. He's like a thousand years old. I
love the guy. And he's just a killer, Like he's
just the energizer bunny. He flies to the Mid East
and coach and I said, Roger, what are you doing?
It's like, well, I need to save the company money.
And you know, he's just an amazing guy. And the
franchises love him. And you know he's he's always signing
(23:11):
some weird new country. You know, we actually we had
you know, stores all over He's trying to sign Matta
Gascar right now. So I'm like, okay, like I saw
the movie. You know, I love Chris Rock as a zebra,
you know, but like, you know, what's the deal. So
you know, it's opportunistic. We don't have a big international team,
(23:33):
but international for US as opportunistic. And you know, I
think we're putting up some pretty good numbers over there.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Cool, And did you you know, did that Middle East
business suffer last year? And and how is it performing
this year?
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, well, I mean listen, there's you know, conflict in
the Mid East. It's you know, it's not new news.
We actually had a restaurant in Palestine, we had a
pizza inn in the West Bank, you know, and that
that closed, you know, and it's not reopened. You know.
It's a you know, tough, tough situation for you know,
the folks over there. But yeah, I mean it's it's
(24:13):
always difficult. International trademarks. You know, you've got international trademark
in fringers. We end up with you know a lot
of legal issues. But you know that's that's just international business.
So sales are good, units are growing, but it's always
it feels like whackable you know, we got like the
guys in Riot, our Saudi partners are awesome. And then
(24:36):
you know, we got another another group in Oman that
just said, you know, we're going to close, and you
know they're going to close you know, their stores and
so now, hey, you know, guys from from Saudi interested
in Oman. Like it's pretty close by mid eas standards.
That's a big area over there, right, it's only a
five hour flight to Oman. You guys should do it.
And so they're working on it, and you know, but
(24:58):
it's you know, I think with the partners that we
have now, I have a lot of faith in their stability.
They're very measured. It's fast growth, but it's very measured.
They continue to have success. So you know, I'd love
for you know, our folks in in you know, Riad
to have you know, basically regional you know, presence. We're
(25:18):
doing great with them.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Good stuff. Let's flip back to the US. What are
the demographics are your customers and what are you seeing
from them this year?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, so you know, our demographics are blue collar, you know,
the racial demographics are you know, more black and white,
you know, kind of less Hispanic, with the exception of Texas,
so again we're kind of sec country, but you know,
our demographics tend to be you know, middle income, and
so you hear everybody, you know, you hear everybody talking
(25:48):
about you no geez, the you know, the lower income
customer is suffering, and you know this is really tough,
and you know we haven't seen it. And you know,
I'll tell you what concerns me is the price of
fuel because we have you know, our stores are spread out.
You know, there's not a Pizza In on every corner.
If you're going to come to Pizza In. You know
a lot of our people drive twenty plus minutes, okay
(26:10):
to a Pizza in, And when the price of gas
goes up, I get nervous that you know that they're
going to say, you know, Pizza In's a great deal,
but it's going to cost me ten bucks in gas
to get there and back. You know, maybe I won't
want to do that. But we're offering such a great
value and it's such a family friendly kind of place
that you know, we're continuing to see traffic and sales growth.
(26:30):
So our primary target is families with kids under twelve.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Do you have kids, Mike, I do. He's seventeen.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Okay, so when he was ten, okay, I'm sure he
you know, I don't want to speak for him. But
you know most teenagers, I know, like parents are tyrants, man. Okay,
when they're ten, you're really tyrants, right because we say, hey,
brush your teeth, do your homework, time to go to bed.
Here's what you're going to eat, like you know, it's
it's stalin esque, man. It's terrible to have parents, right,
(26:58):
they hate it. And so when they get to Pizza In,
all bets are off, it's freedom for for kids. They
walk up, they serve themselves. They're not waiting for someone.
They grab a plate and they go at it. And
there's pizza, pasta salad and an amazing dessert bar that
the kids just love. So you know, we're not trying
(27:18):
to drive you know, primary demand for the pizza category.
We're trying to drive selective demand for our brand. And
you know, kids love Pizza In. Parents love it because
it's easy. You know, you're not with the Krans and
the Tic tac Toe trying to wait for a win's dinner,
going to get here. It's a very family friendly, you
know kind of place, very rooted in community. We have deep,
(27:40):
deep roots in the communities that we operate in. In
some ways, it's like the community coming together. You know,
we all show up at the buffet and we all
eat from the same buffet. There's a real you know,
togetherness to the pizza inn vibe that I just love.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
All Right, So this is what I you know, I
saved it for last. I've been dying ask you about
the Bambian Friends pizza.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
You know, I had that down here. I knew that
was coming. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
I talked to if you could talk about like how
that originated and the marketing plan behind it, and I
saw that you brought it back last year and he
plans to bring it back again.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah. So you know, in my in my marketing you
know kind of resume, I've had some really outlandish, bizarre ideas.
You know. One was the I was the marketing director
for Reese's Peanut Butter cup. I brought out the Reese's
Elvis cup, right Elvis like peanut butter banana sandwich. We
had a you know, put a layer of banana cream
in a Reese's cup and just killed it with the
(28:38):
Elvis cup. And so it's one of the things I'm
kind of known for is these offbeat ideas, and you know,
I always end up with somebody from HR sending me
for drug testing for some reason or another. But yeah,
we're sitting around. Really it was born on a you know,
of our franchise's. I got a franchise e in Arkansas,
and you know, I call him and he's like, oh wait,
I'm out turkey hunting. You know, I'll take your call,
(29:00):
but I got to be quiet. You know, our franchisees
are these like, you know, good old boys, and you know,
so a lot of our customers are. And I said,
you know what if we did like a like a
wild game pizza. That's how it started. It was wild
game and you know, we got to hold of some
suppliers and it's hard to find you know, wild game,
you know, pepperoni and wild game sausage, but we managed
(29:22):
to find it. We worked with our ad agency and
they came up with this idea. They called it the
Bambi Pizza, and I mean the board had a fit.
My board went bananas on this idea. And the first
version was like baby Bambi, like you know Bambi as
a child, and the Board's like you can't do this.
We're gonna you know, we're gonna have like you know,
(29:42):
protests at the home office, and you know, oh my god.
And so I went to the agency and I said,
you guys got to you got to revise it. And
you know, they're like, well, you're gonna kill the idea, Like,
we can't really water it down. So what they did
is they made Bamby an adult and they put like
antlers on them. And then we ran it. I told
the board, hey, look we changed it. It's not a
baby anymore. And the thing went crazy. We sold out
(30:05):
like right away, you know. We did it in a
subset of our stores and some of our more rural stores.
It went, it went absolutely crazy. Of course, we got
protested by you know, the animal rights guys or whatever.
But we put up an installation outdoor billboard where you know,
and it's we have these like thought bubbles and it
says Bambi saying we taste delicious, you know, and you know,
(30:26):
as Bambi and his friends, you know, the wild wild
boar and all that sort of thing. But we sent
this in. We ended up winning an Obie Award, this
outdoor advertising award. We beat Disney and Netflix for the
best installation because we had this billboard and then we
put these like you know, like three D Deer and
(30:46):
Elk out in front of it, and we had them
all looking up at the billboard with them on it.
And so you know, we know our customer. You know, listen,
I moved here from Portland, Oregon. You know that would
not fly in Portland, Oregon. But guess what, they love
it in Arkansas and in Texas and you know in
the Carolina is where we did it. So you got
to know your customer. That's probably not a great idea
(31:07):
for every brand, but we did it. It was fun
as hell, we won an award, and you know, and
the board didn't fire me, so it all all ended well.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Awesome, man, very cool. I think that's a great spot
to wrap it up. Thanks for doing this, Brandon, and
thanks to the audience for tuning in. If you like
to learn more about Rave Restaurant Group and you don't
have a Bloomberg terminal, visit their investor relations page at
raverg dot com. If you liked our discussion, please share
it with your friends and colleagues. Check back soon for
(31:38):
another interview on chopping it up,
Host
Michael Halen
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.