May 29, 2025 • 21 mins
Authentic Neapolitan pizza finally gets the franchise treatment it deserves! In this captivating conversation, we sit down with Trey Reinhart, a Cascadia Pizza franchisee who's redefining what's possible in pizza franchising.
Trey's story starts far from the world of food - managing truck stops and gas stations - before recognizing an opportunity when the corporate world began squeezing his entrepreneurial spirit. When his brother started developing Cascadia Pizza, Trey spent seven months learning the craft before taking the plunge to ownership. Now, just six months into operation, his two-story restaurant with rooftop dining regularly reaches capacity on weekends, despite having opened during November (typically a restaurant's worst month).
What makes this concept unique? Cascadia Pizza features authentic wood-fired ovens imported piece by piece from Italy, assembled by specialists flown in from New York. These ovens cook perfect Neapolitan-style pizzas in just 90 seconds, creating an efficient operation with impressive margins. Trey has already optimized his business to achieve approximately 23-24% labor costs and 21.5% food costs - remarkable efficiency for a new restaurant.
The most exciting development? Trey just added a food truck to his operation, allowing him to cater weddings and events while simultaneously marketing his brick-and-mortar location. He's already booked six weddings without advertising, showing the tremendous demand for quality, authentic pizza in non-traditional settings.
Want to explore this unique franchise opportunity in an underserved pizza niche? Text us at 305-710-450 to check if your territory is still available. With Cascadia Pizza's proven concept and growing popularity, these territories won't last long!
Text: 305-710-0050
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi everyone, welcome back to the we Bought a
Franchise podcast.
I'm Jack Johnson, I'm JillJohnson and we are here today
with Trey Reinhart from CascadiaPizza.
You guys, cascadia Pizza is oneof the newest franchises in our
portfolio, but it is so specialto me and Jill because Cascadia
Pizza makes beautifulNeapolitan-style pizzas, which
(00:23):
any of you that follow us know.
It's a passion of mine.
Trey, welcome to the show.
Thanks for joining us today.
Hey, thanks for having me.
So, trey, what's it like?
Sort of pioneering a new pizzafranchise brand?
Are you guys mobile?
Is it mobile only?
Do you guys also have retaillocations?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
So we have retail locations.
I started out at just having abrick and mortar and I actually
got my food truck on Thursday,so just a few days ago, and I'm
excited to start that ventureout.
I kind of did it a little bitbackwards.
Usually a lot of people startwith the food truck, build the
clientele, build the base andthen go into a brick and mortar.
But I had a deal that came upthat was kind of hard to pass
(01:05):
down, so I kind of jumped headfirst and got a brick and mortar
and then now I got my foodtruck.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So Trey Jill and I have been talking about this for
years.
We believe there is a massivehole.
Pizza obviously is awell-developed sector in
franchising right.
We've got a lot of big namesout there but there's not a lot
in terms of Neapolitan.
There was a company about maybeeight years ago that came from
(01:35):
the Menchies folks and theytried to franchise but maybe
they grew a little too fast.
So there really hasn't beenanyone since that's come into
the franchise world on theNeapolitan side.
For those of the listeners outthere, they're sitting there
saying what on earth is aNeapolitan pizza?
How would you describe it?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
It's more artisan type, it's 100% wood fire.
I would say there's like threemain things about like our pizza
it's the red sauce, the doughand the cheese.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
It's mainly just traditional kind of pizza that
you would see in Napoli.
You went to Italy.
That's what you would get,right?
Yeah, exactly, it's like thepizza that they're eating.
And for you guys, how fast doyou cook these pizzas?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
It takes about 90 seconds to cook.
That's great yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And did the franchisor help you source, like
the oven and all that?
Did they do that?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, so they helped me source the oven and also a
wood guy, because I moved to anew part of the United States.
Like I'm from Seattle, I moveddown to the Portland area and I
didn't know where I could getwood.
I didn't know where I could geta lot of like, yeah, oven, hvac
stuff, like random things.
The franchisor helped me out aton on kind of sourcing out
(02:50):
where I can get wood, where Ican get that pizza oven, and
what's really cool is where theyget their pizza oven is from
Italy, so it comes from Italy,and then they ship it piece by
piece in my case, and they sentout a team from New York that
put it, assembled it alltogether in my restaurant.
Yeah, it's really like closestthing that you can get to
(03:12):
Italian is my oven.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
So that's exciting.
So trade, take us back.
You know, here you are.
You own a pizza franchise.
You're a franchisee.
You're six months into yourjourney, yes, yeah.
So six months is usually one ofthe hardest parts of franchise
ownership.
How are you feeling these days?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I'm feeling good man like.
I think the first like monthwas extremely challenging, even
before we were opening, justgetting all of the different
like uh, red tape, bureaucracy,stuff with the city and the
state, all the permits.
I would say like I've neverbeen more stressed in my life
for the first like three weeksof just getting everything up
(03:51):
and running, training the crew.
And then I was working two,three hours before open to an
hour and a half after close,because I'm also my own
accountant bookkeeper, I'm themanager of the pizzeria.
You know I did all the hiring,all the training, so I was
wearing a lot of hats.
Luckily, six months in, I'mstarting to kind of outsource a
(04:13):
lot of the small stuff becausemy team is now trained for the
most part.
First like first two monthswere pretty challenging and I
was running around like achicken with my head cut off.
So it was fun, but I don't wantto go back to that.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yeah, that's.
That's normal for starting abusiness and very normal.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
It gets easier as you scale and you build revenue and
add on more people to help Umand so, Trey, what were you
doing before franchise ownership?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So I it's kind of a random thing, but I was working
at truck stops and gas stations,so completely different than
food service.
I was managing multiple likegas stations throughout college
and then after college and Ireally enjoyed it.
(05:12):
I liked interacting with people, but and it was a small family
business and then it got boughtout, it became super corporate
and it wasn't really my you knowtype of thing anymore, because
I liked being able to know allthe customers.
I liked being able to, you know, be in the weeds in a lot of
things.
And then, when it got socorporate, they said, hey,
(05:32):
here's your box, stay in yourbox, you can't do anything else.
And I was like, well, I'm superADHD, I need to move around,
and they wouldn't let me.
And my brother started Cascadiaand I said, hey, you know what I
really don't like, what I do.
I did like it.
Now it's super corporate.
I'd like to franchise from you.
Because he was starting to getthat ball rolling and so I
(05:53):
worked for him.
I quit my job, so I worked forhim for about seven months just
to kind of learn the craft,because I had zero experience in
the food industry and also kindof my personality.
I'd like to just kind of buildthe skills and become really
good at like understanding how arestaurant works and everything
(06:13):
like that.
Not everybody there's a lot ofpeople that can just jump in but
for me I wanted to really likefocus on learning how to all the
facets of a restaurant.
So I worked for him for aboutseven months and then
opportunity arose and I took it.
So yeah, it's the.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
American dream.
And you guys started in Seattle, right?
Is that where the firstlocation is?
Yeah, Seattle area.
Yeah, so Jill's family's fromSeattle, um, and we go, uh, we
live in Boca Raton, florida, butwe go back to Seattle two,
three times.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
So there's a store in Bellevue, Maple Valley,
Enumclaw, and then a food truckin North Bend.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Very cool, Excellent.
That's exciting.
Yeah.
So when you guys came into ourportfolio, we were so excited
about this because it really isvery different For those of you
out there.
I think the points that Trey ismaking are very good.
Now.
He started with a retaillocation, but I'll bet the
franchisor is okay with youstarting with the food truck and
scaling.
(07:12):
You're right, You're a betterlistener than me.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
You are proof that you probably could do it both
ways too, so there's anopportunity to do that.
But yeah, I mean I think that'svery cool to be able to do that
.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
And do you guys with the truck?
Did you get a new truck, a usedtruck?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Tell me about you know what you guys look, because
obviously it has to.
It has to kind of tow the theoven around.
How does that work?
So I got a used truck and theoven's actually inside the truck
, which is really nice, so youcan all your cooking and
stretching a pizza dough,topping it, expo can be done
inside the truck.
It's about like 16,000 pounds.
(07:48):
It's pretty big truck but youdon't need a CDL to drive it.
So that's, that's really nice.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Well.
So I'm interested in thisbecause even for those of you
out there, this ties into aquestion that that a lot of
prospective franchisees ask,which is around section 179 tax
deduction.
So when you buy even a usedtruck, you can typically capture
that as a write-off.
So let's say, your truck cost,you know, and if you're buying
it used there's rules around howmuch you can collect, but it is
(08:15):
a major tax write-off, thingslike that.
So that's the beauty of being abusiness owner, especially in
states where you have highertaxes, is a lot of these things
that we buy for our businessesare great tax write-offs to
knock down some of that taxburden.
So for those of you out there,that is an advantage for a
business like this, especiallyif you're going to deploy a
fleet of trucks to go out thereNice for revenue production,
(08:37):
nice for writing off taxes.
And so now you have the truckand you've got the location.
Do you guys do alcohol or noalcohol In?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
the restaurant I do beer and wine, Okay, and then on
the food truck occasionally wedo like soda pop and water that
we sell.
I don't want to sell alcohol.
I don't know what the lawswould be for selling alcohol out
of a truck.
I'm sure they're a little bitmore stingent.
So I just kind of stay awayfrom that and just focus on
pizza.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Go ahead, jill.
I'm sorry, so many questions,so many questions.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
So with the truck, are you seeing like, are you
parking it in like a businesspark?
Are you doing events Like howdoes that work with the truck?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
So I'm kind of searching for events.
I'm in the Willamette Valley,which there's a lot of wineries
where I'm at, so I do a lot ofwineries, elementary school,
like carnivals or fundraisers.
Then there's a lot of weddingstoo that I'm going to be doing.
I think I didn't even have thefood truck and I wasn't really
advertising it, but I had likesix people come up to me, maybe
(09:39):
like the first month that I wasopening, saying, hey, we want to
cater a wedding.
I was like, hey, well, I don'thave my food truck, but I'm
going to get in May.
I would love to cater yourwedding.
So I have six organic leads,without advertising, for
weddings.
And, yeah, like, everybody lovespizza, so it works out for
weddings and that's where youmake your bread and butter on
(09:59):
those food truck shifts.
It's like weddings weddingsaren't cheap, so you make good
money on the weddings.
And yeah, and what's great tooabout food truck is you're
getting paid to advertise.
So every time I'm driving Ihave a big thing that says
Cascadia pizza and then, likeI'm going to customers for them
to try our pizza.
Now they're saying, oh, my gosh, I love this pizza.
(10:21):
Where are you guys located?
And then, boom, now myrestaurant sales are going up as
well because I'm just gettingbuilding, building the brand.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
How big is the restaurant?
How many people can sit in therestaurant?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
So I have mine's two stories so I can fit about 50
downstairs.
And then I just opened up.
It's like a rooftop bar typedeal and it's about 60 people up
top.
How cool is it?
It's going to be awesome, yeah.
So what's cool is a lot ofFriday, saturday nights.
(10:56):
I reach capacity.
First few weeks I was reachingcapacity because the franchise
team really built us up onsocial media so we were getting.
I opened up in November, whichis the worst time to open up a
restaurant and it's usually likethe worst months for
restaurants is that winter timeand because of the social media
marketing that they did, um, andmy December and January were
(11:19):
fantastic sales with 50 seats.
I was, you know, I just packedevery Friday Saturday night.
It was pretty cool, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
That's amazing.
That's excellent.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah, congrats to you .
Speaker 1 (11:30):
That just shows you the power.
If you have great pizza, if Ithink having the wine and beer
is a crucial thing, especially,I mean in any market, but where
you are in particular, how hardwas it to get the license for
beer and wine?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So the OLCC, which is the Oregon Liquor Cannabis.
Anyway, it was a little bitharder than most like states.
It took me I had to buy a bunchof like temporary permit.
It took like two months to getuh from application process to
get it finally approved, but Iwas able to do like where I
(12:06):
could like do temporary permits.
So it was like 200 a week untilI was finally approved for uh
yearly license.
But like that was probably theleast challenging part of that.
It was just more wait and seeand then pay your fine.
I had like weird laws about howbig my sign could be and that
was a huge pain in the butt togo through as well as gosh, I'm
(12:29):
trying to think where else theHVAC.
I'm in a meeting, so the um,the HVAC was really challenging
and same with the signs, but theliquor was kind of actually
pretty easy at the liquorlicense.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
So so, like I make Neapolitan pizza at home, it
took me a long time to figure itout, Like I was terrible when I
first started, but I loved itRight Cause we, we would go to
these restaurants that makethese great pizzas and I'd be
like I've got to learn how to dothat.
How hard is it to teach peoplehow to make good Neapolitan
pizza?
You guys have a good system inplace for that.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, it's a good system.
I had the franchisors come down.
They were here for the first,probably a couple of weeks of
training, maybe the first week,and it is.
It's definitely a little bitmore challenging than like
dominoes.
You just throw it in the ovenand let it sit, like for us it's
crazy on how like you got toput your wood in a certain place
(13:24):
and that helps it breathebetter and you get a better
flame.
Doing the making sure thetemperature of the floor is not
too hot or too cold, but makingsure the air temp is right on
point too.
So there's a lot of like littlethings.
There's probably a millionlittle things.
But we have high schoolersmaking pizza and they can pick
it up, so but the training partis just like anything, it just
(13:49):
takes time.
I would say I had a good crewthat had done had pizza
experience in the past, so ittook them probably like a month
to really like those people thatreally get good at making pizza
.
For the kids that are 16 yearsold, it's their first job ever.
They don't really have anyexperience with food, even at
(14:12):
home.
That has taken like probablyprobably get two, two and a half
months of training yeah, I meanwork.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Didn't you work like some type of like thing where
you were making pizza?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
but you microwave pizza in a microwave.
Yeah, sometimes a toaster whatwas that?
Speaker 1 (14:29):
is that, like a country club country club, joe
was in the snack bar you couldmake pizza.
What else did you make?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Sandwiches and the big pretzels.
I had to microwave those andactually you had to then wet it
with paper towel and sprinklesalt.
So it was kind of complicated.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Look at that methodology.
I mean come on.
But I was on.
Tv, so I didn't have to do it.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
So we all got to start somewhere.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
I mean, that's where my first job was making pizza,
for, yeah, it was called roundtable pizza, and I remember they
had like the assembly line andit was like, okay, here's how
much cheese, here's how muchtopping.
So it was all very much, youknow, structured, which was
great.
But there's something here, forthose of you out there
listening, I'm going to tell you, joe and I for those of you
that are new to the show, we arefranchise consultants.
(15:14):
We've helped over 600 peoplebecome franchise owners over the
years.
We're franchise owners, andPaulton Pizza is a very unique
space and it's one that nobodyowns.
And you're hearing it here.
Look what Trey is doing.
In just a few short months,trey, you'd never operated a
restaurant before.
And look at the scaling thatyou guys are doing.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
It took a lot of work, but wemade it so far.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, well, what would you say with that in mind?
What were things that surprisedyou that maybe you didn't know?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
going in both positive and negative, I guess
the thing that surprised me themost was all of the like red
tape.
I mean with the government andgetting all the permitting and
all that stuff.
As someone that's never owned abusiness, I had no clue on all
of the paperwork that's involved, whether it's with the food
(16:05):
department or with justeverything that revolves around
that.
I have an accounting degree, solike I thought bookkeeping was
going to be easy.
Taxes are way different.
As a business owner, I feltlike I learned a lot in school,
but they didn't really teach youhow to run a business that well
.
I would say those are the twomost surprising things.
(16:27):
For me is just really learninghow to navigate the red tape in
the area and each city and eachstate is different is a little
bit more challenging, I think,than a lot of states.
Yeah, there's just a lot ofdumb things.
In my opinion.
I would say that's the mostsurprising thing.
I guess.
Like shoot, yeah, I don't know,everybody loves the pizzas.
(16:49):
I think.
Uh, training is a lot harder on.
The hardest part is you'regoing to make mistakes and make
bad, bad pizzas, but trainingyour staff on hey, what's a,
what's a good pizza?
Like what?
What does this look like?
You know how do you inspect itbefore we give it out to the
customer?
That was a hard hurdle becausea lot of people go into like a
(17:12):
nine to five job and they don'treally take like look
intricately at every singlepizza that comes out.
So that was hard to trainpeople.
I'm like, hey, what's what's agood pizza?
Uh, what's good customerservice?
Look like all that kind ofstuff.
But yeah, hardest thing forsure it was the red tape.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
That's the thing with Neapolitan is you've got to
make sure you've got that rightleopard spotting.
You know it's got to have it'sthat there's intricacies to it
and I'm glad to hear that youguys are taking that in as part
of the details, and you're soright.
I mean, there are so manyfranchise owners that Jill and I
talked to that do not knowtheir numbers that if you say
(17:50):
give me a P&L, they're like holdon, let me talk to my
accountant.
You've got to have that stuff.
You've got to know your numbers.
You've got to.
In my opinion, you better bechecking that P&L three times a
week.
I think if you can keep yourlabor not talking about like
your manager or something likethat, but the talent that's
making the pizza if you canreally pin that to 25% of your
gross revenue, I think you'redoing great.
(18:10):
But yeah, the magic to successin business ownership is knowing
your numbers and having urgencyaround sales.
What does this week look like?
What does next week look like?
How are we doing compared tolast month?
Knowing your numbers, beingurgent to drive sales and grow
that's really the key to beingsuccessful and it sounds like
you guys are on the right trackto doing that.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, what's great is I mean we have, uh, I had to
carry a heavy labor for thefirst few months because of
training, where I'm creeping upinto that 33%, uh, you know,
labor to revenue, which is notwhere you want to be as a
restaurant, um, but as my team'sgotten better and then I can
kind of just have aces play, youknow the best player at each
(18:54):
position, where now I'm at 23,24% labor.
That's including, you know, allmy admin.
I'm doing most of the adminmyself, but it's including, you
know, all the front of housestaff, the dishwasher person.
It's um, where, as I've gottenbetter, my labor's gone down.
My food costs have gone down aswell, just because I'm not
(19:17):
throwing away as many pizzas.
I'm at like 21%, uh, 21 and ahalf percent on my cost of goods
.
Pizza might cost just a fewdollars to go out.
We're selling it for 14.
So it's uh, we're in a reallygood, um, neapolitan style.
It's high demand, it's cheap tomake and you can sell it for a
(19:38):
lot higher uh price point than adomino's no no, and you're
doing great.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
I think, honestly, in your first year, if you're even
under 40 on the labor, you'regreat because you, like you said
, you could have time to figureit out.
And I I think, by year two, ifyou can even under 40% on the
labor, you're great Cause you,like you said, you get up time
to figure it out.
And I think, by year two, ifyou can get it to 25% which
sounds like you're alreadyalmost there um, then you're
doing it right.
I mean, it sounds likeeverything you know that you're
doing is growing in a verypositive direction.
Now, now we just need to cometry some of this pizza.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, yeah, you got to.
I'm in salem oregon, so if youever find yourself in oregon or
go up to seattle or idaho,there's a franchisee in idaho as
well, so it's really good pizza.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
We're going, we're going to be in seattle next
month, we're going to go andwe're going to uh, we're going
to document it, but this hasbeen so great.
Thank you for joining ourpodcast and and just to share
with everyone out there.
For those of you that areinterested in casascadia Pizza,
you know the drill Text us at305-710-450.
We'd be happy to check and seeif your territory is still
available.
(20:37):
My thoughts are is that thisone's going to grow pretty
quickly, so it's a goodopportunity to get your hat in
the ring and start exploringthis really unique franchise
opportunity in a proven sector.
Jill any other thoughts?
Questions.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
No, I think it's really exciting.
We've been kind of waiting forthis for a while so we've had a
lot of like prior interest.
We have obviously interestourself personally, just because
we love it.
So it's really fun to hear yourstory and your guys' success
and you know we wish you guysall the best and let's see how
many we can help you guys.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
So absolutely right.
Thank you for joining ourpodcast.
Yeah, thank you have.
Hi everyone, welcome back to the we Bought a
Franchise podcast.
I'm Jack Johnson, I'm JillJohnson and we are here today
with Trey Reinhart from CascadiaPizza.
You guys, cascadia Pizza is oneof the newest franchises in our
portfolio, but it is so specialto me and Jill because Cascadia
Pizza makes beautifulNeapolitan-style pizzas, which
(00:23):
any of you that follow us know.
It's a passion of mine.
Trey, welcome to the show.
Thanks for joining us today.
Hey, thanks for having me.
So, trey, what's it like?
Sort of pioneering a new pizzafranchise brand?
Are you guys mobile?
Is it mobile only?
Do you guys also have retaillocations?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
So we have retail locations.
I started out at just having abrick and mortar and I actually
got my food truck on Thursday,so just a few days ago, and I'm
excited to start that ventureout.
I kind of did it a little bitbackwards.
Usually a lot of people startwith the food truck, build the
clientele, build the base andthen go into a brick and mortar.
But I had a deal that came upthat was kind of hard to pass
(01:05):
down, so I kind of jumped headfirst and got a brick and mortar
and then now I got my foodtruck.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So Trey Jill and I have been talking about this for
years.
We believe there is a massivehole.
Pizza obviously is awell-developed sector in
franchising right.
We've got a lot of big namesout there but there's not a lot
in terms of Neapolitan.
There was a company about maybeeight years ago that came from
(01:35):
the Menchies folks and theytried to franchise but maybe
they grew a little too fast.
So there really hasn't beenanyone since that's come into
the franchise world on theNeapolitan side.
For those of the listeners outthere, they're sitting there
saying what on earth is aNeapolitan pizza?
How would you describe it?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
It's more artisan type, it's 100% wood fire.
I would say there's like threemain things about like our pizza
it's the red sauce, the doughand the cheese.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
It's mainly just traditional kind of pizza that
you would see in Napoli.
You went to Italy.
That's what you would get,right?
Yeah, exactly, it's like thepizza that they're eating.
And for you guys, how fast doyou cook these pizzas?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
It takes about 90 seconds to cook.
That's great yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And did the franchisor help you source, like
the oven and all that?
Did they do that?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, so they helped me source the oven and also a
wood guy, because I moved to anew part of the United States.
Like I'm from Seattle, I moveddown to the Portland area and I
didn't know where I could getwood.
I didn't know where I could geta lot of like, yeah, oven, hvac
stuff, like random things.
The franchisor helped me out aton on kind of sourcing out
(02:50):
where I can get wood, where Ican get that pizza oven, and
what's really cool is where theyget their pizza oven is from
Italy, so it comes from Italy,and then they ship it piece by
piece in my case, and they sentout a team from New York that
put it, assembled it alltogether in my restaurant.
Yeah, it's really like closestthing that you can get to
(03:12):
Italian is my oven.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
So that's exciting.
So trade, take us back.
You know, here you are.
You own a pizza franchise.
You're a franchisee.
You're six months into yourjourney, yes, yeah.
So six months is usually one ofthe hardest parts of franchise
ownership.
How are you feeling these days?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I'm feeling good man like.
I think the first like monthwas extremely challenging, even
before we were opening, justgetting all of the different
like uh, red tape, bureaucracy,stuff with the city and the
state, all the permits.
I would say like I've neverbeen more stressed in my life
for the first like three weeksof just getting everything up
(03:51):
and running, training the crew.
And then I was working two,three hours before open to an
hour and a half after close,because I'm also my own
accountant bookkeeper, I'm themanager of the pizzeria.
You know I did all the hiring,all the training, so I was
wearing a lot of hats.
Luckily, six months in, I'mstarting to kind of outsource a
(04:13):
lot of the small stuff becausemy team is now trained for the
most part.
First like first two monthswere pretty challenging and I
was running around like achicken with my head cut off.
So it was fun, but I don't wantto go back to that.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yeah, that's.
That's normal for starting abusiness and very normal.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
It gets easier as you scale and you build revenue and
add on more people to help Umand so, Trey, what were you
doing before franchise ownership?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So I it's kind of a random thing, but I was working
at truck stops and gas stations,so completely different than
food service.
I was managing multiple likegas stations throughout college
and then after college and Ireally enjoyed it.
(05:12):
I liked interacting with people, but and it was a small family
business and then it got boughtout, it became super corporate
and it wasn't really my you knowtype of thing anymore, because
I liked being able to know allthe customers.
I liked being able to, you know, be in the weeds in a lot of
things.
And then, when it got socorporate, they said, hey,
(05:32):
here's your box, stay in yourbox, you can't do anything else.
And I was like, well, I'm superADHD, I need to move around,
and they wouldn't let me.
And my brother started Cascadiaand I said, hey, you know what I
really don't like, what I do.
I did like it.
Now it's super corporate.
I'd like to franchise from you.
Because he was starting to getthat ball rolling and so I
(05:53):
worked for him.
I quit my job, so I worked forhim for about seven months just
to kind of learn the craft,because I had zero experience in
the food industry and also kindof my personality.
I'd like to just kind of buildthe skills and become really
good at like understanding how arestaurant works and everything
(06:13):
like that.
Not everybody there's a lot ofpeople that can just jump in but
for me I wanted to really likefocus on learning how to all the
facets of a restaurant.
So I worked for him for aboutseven months and then
opportunity arose and I took it.
So yeah, it's the.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
American dream.
And you guys started in Seattle, right?
Is that where the firstlocation is?
Yeah, Seattle area.
Yeah, so Jill's family's fromSeattle, um, and we go, uh, we
live in Boca Raton, florida, butwe go back to Seattle two,
three times.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
So there's a store in Bellevue, Maple Valley,
Enumclaw, and then a food truckin North Bend.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Very cool, Excellent.
That's exciting.
Yeah.
So when you guys came into ourportfolio, we were so excited
about this because it really isvery different For those of you
out there.
I think the points that Trey ismaking are very good.
Now.
He started with a retaillocation, but I'll bet the
franchisor is okay with youstarting with the food truck and
scaling.
(07:12):
You're right, You're a betterlistener than me.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
You are proof that you probably could do it both
ways too, so there's anopportunity to do that.
But yeah, I mean I think that'svery cool to be able to do that
.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
And do you guys with the truck?
Did you get a new truck, a usedtruck?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Tell me about you know what you guys look, because
obviously it has to.
It has to kind of tow the theoven around.
How does that work?
So I got a used truck and theoven's actually inside the truck
, which is really nice, so youcan all your cooking and
stretching a pizza dough,topping it, expo can be done
inside the truck.
It's about like 16,000 pounds.
(07:48):
It's pretty big truck but youdon't need a CDL to drive it.
So that's, that's really nice.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Well.
So I'm interested in thisbecause even for those of you
out there, this ties into aquestion that that a lot of
prospective franchisees ask,which is around section 179 tax
deduction.
So when you buy even a usedtruck, you can typically capture
that as a write-off.
So let's say, your truck cost,you know, and if you're buying
it used there's rules around howmuch you can collect, but it is
(08:15):
a major tax write-off, thingslike that.
So that's the beauty of being abusiness owner, especially in
states where you have highertaxes, is a lot of these things
that we buy for our businessesare great tax write-offs to
knock down some of that taxburden.
So for those of you out there,that is an advantage for a
business like this, especiallyif you're going to deploy a
fleet of trucks to go out thereNice for revenue production,
(08:37):
nice for writing off taxes.
And so now you have the truckand you've got the location.
Do you guys do alcohol or noalcohol In?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
the restaurant I do beer and wine, Okay, and then on
the food truck occasionally wedo like soda pop and water that
we sell.
I don't want to sell alcohol.
I don't know what the lawswould be for selling alcohol out
of a truck.
I'm sure they're a little bitmore stingent.
So I just kind of stay awayfrom that and just focus on
pizza.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Go ahead, jill.
I'm sorry, so many questions,so many questions.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
So with the truck, are you seeing like, are you
parking it in like a businesspark?
Are you doing events Like howdoes that work with the truck?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
So I'm kind of searching for events.
I'm in the Willamette Valley,which there's a lot of wineries
where I'm at, so I do a lot ofwineries, elementary school,
like carnivals or fundraisers.
Then there's a lot of weddingstoo that I'm going to be doing.
I think I didn't even have thefood truck and I wasn't really
advertising it, but I had likesix people come up to me, maybe
(09:39):
like the first month that I wasopening, saying, hey, we want to
cater a wedding.
I was like, hey, well, I don'thave my food truck, but I'm
going to get in May.
I would love to cater yourwedding.
So I have six organic leads,without advertising, for
weddings.
And, yeah, like, everybody lovespizza, so it works out for
weddings and that's where youmake your bread and butter on
(09:59):
those food truck shifts.
It's like weddings weddingsaren't cheap, so you make good
money on the weddings.
And yeah, and what's great tooabout food truck is you're
getting paid to advertise.
So every time I'm driving Ihave a big thing that says
Cascadia pizza and then, likeI'm going to customers for them
to try our pizza.
Now they're saying, oh, my gosh, I love this pizza.
(10:21):
Where are you guys located?
And then, boom, now myrestaurant sales are going up as
well because I'm just gettingbuilding, building the brand.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
How big is the restaurant?
How many people can sit in therestaurant?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
So I have mine's two stories so I can fit about 50
downstairs.
And then I just opened up.
It's like a rooftop bar typedeal and it's about 60 people up
top.
How cool is it?
It's going to be awesome, yeah.
So what's cool is a lot ofFriday, saturday nights.
(10:56):
I reach capacity.
First few weeks I was reachingcapacity because the franchise
team really built us up onsocial media so we were getting.
I opened up in November, whichis the worst time to open up a
restaurant and it's usually likethe worst months for
restaurants is that winter timeand because of the social media
marketing that they did, um, andmy December and January were
(11:19):
fantastic sales with 50 seats.
I was, you know, I just packedevery Friday Saturday night.
It was pretty cool, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
That's amazing.
That's excellent.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah, congrats to you .
Speaker 1 (11:30):
That just shows you the power.
If you have great pizza, if Ithink having the wine and beer
is a crucial thing, especially,I mean in any market, but where
you are in particular, how hardwas it to get the license for
beer and wine?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So the OLCC, which is the Oregon Liquor Cannabis.
Anyway, it was a little bitharder than most like states.
It took me I had to buy a bunchof like temporary permit.
It took like two months to getuh from application process to
get it finally approved, but Iwas able to do like where I
(12:06):
could like do temporary permits.
So it was like 200 a week untilI was finally approved for uh
yearly license.
But like that was probably theleast challenging part of that.
It was just more wait and seeand then pay your fine.
I had like weird laws about howbig my sign could be and that
was a huge pain in the butt togo through as well as gosh, I'm
(12:29):
trying to think where else theHVAC.
I'm in a meeting, so the um,the HVAC was really challenging
and same with the signs, but theliquor was kind of actually
pretty easy at the liquorlicense.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
So so, like I make Neapolitan pizza at home, it
took me a long time to figure itout, Like I was terrible when I
first started, but I loved itRight Cause we, we would go to
these restaurants that makethese great pizzas and I'd be
like I've got to learn how to dothat.
How hard is it to teach peoplehow to make good Neapolitan
pizza?
You guys have a good system inplace for that.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, it's a good system.
I had the franchisors come down.
They were here for the first,probably a couple of weeks of
training, maybe the first week,and it is.
It's definitely a little bitmore challenging than like
dominoes.
You just throw it in the ovenand let it sit, like for us it's
crazy on how like you got toput your wood in a certain place
(13:24):
and that helps it breathebetter and you get a better
flame.
Doing the making sure thetemperature of the floor is not
too hot or too cold, but makingsure the air temp is right on
point too.
So there's a lot of like littlethings.
There's probably a millionlittle things.
But we have high schoolersmaking pizza and they can pick
it up, so but the training partis just like anything, it just
(13:49):
takes time.
I would say I had a good crewthat had done had pizza
experience in the past, so ittook them probably like a month
to really like those people thatreally get good at making pizza
.
For the kids that are 16 yearsold, it's their first job ever.
They don't really have anyexperience with food, even at
(14:12):
home.
That has taken like probablyprobably get two, two and a half
months of training yeah, I meanwork.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Didn't you work like some type of like thing where
you were making pizza?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
but you microwave pizza in a microwave.
Yeah, sometimes a toaster whatwas that?
Speaker 1 (14:29):
is that, like a country club country club, joe
was in the snack bar you couldmake pizza.
What else did you make?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Sandwiches and the big pretzels.
I had to microwave those andactually you had to then wet it
with paper towel and sprinklesalt.
So it was kind of complicated.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Look at that methodology.
I mean come on.
But I was on.
Tv, so I didn't have to do it.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
So we all got to start somewhere.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
I mean, that's where my first job was making pizza,
for, yeah, it was called roundtable pizza, and I remember they
had like the assembly line andit was like, okay, here's how
much cheese, here's how muchtopping.
So it was all very much, youknow, structured, which was
great.
But there's something here, forthose of you out there
listening, I'm going to tell you, joe and I for those of you
that are new to the show, we arefranchise consultants.
(15:14):
We've helped over 600 peoplebecome franchise owners over the
years.
We're franchise owners, andPaulton Pizza is a very unique
space and it's one that nobodyowns.
And you're hearing it here.
Look what Trey is doing.
In just a few short months,trey, you'd never operated a
restaurant before.
And look at the scaling thatyou guys are doing.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
It took a lot of work, but wemade it so far.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, well, what would you say with that in mind?
What were things that surprisedyou that maybe you didn't know?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
going in both positive and negative, I guess
the thing that surprised me themost was all of the like red
tape.
I mean with the government andgetting all the permitting and
all that stuff.
As someone that's never owned abusiness, I had no clue on all
of the paperwork that's involved, whether it's with the food
(16:05):
department or with justeverything that revolves around
that.
I have an accounting degree, solike I thought bookkeeping was
going to be easy.
Taxes are way different.
As a business owner, I feltlike I learned a lot in school,
but they didn't really teach youhow to run a business that well
.
I would say those are the twomost surprising things.
(16:27):
For me is just really learninghow to navigate the red tape in
the area and each city and eachstate is different is a little
bit more challenging, I think,than a lot of states.
Yeah, there's just a lot ofdumb things.
In my opinion.
I would say that's the mostsurprising thing.
I guess.
Like shoot, yeah, I don't know,everybody loves the pizzas.
(16:49):
I think.
Uh, training is a lot harder on.
The hardest part is you'regoing to make mistakes and make
bad, bad pizzas, but trainingyour staff on hey, what's a,
what's a good pizza?
Like what?
What does this look like?
You know how do you inspect itbefore we give it out to the
customer?
That was a hard hurdle becausea lot of people go into like a
(17:12):
nine to five job and they don'treally take like look
intricately at every singlepizza that comes out.
So that was hard to trainpeople.
I'm like, hey, what's what's agood pizza?
Uh, what's good customerservice?
Look like all that kind ofstuff.
But yeah, hardest thing forsure it was the red tape.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
That's the thing with Neapolitan is you've got to
make sure you've got that rightleopard spotting.
You know it's got to have it'sthat there's intricacies to it
and I'm glad to hear that youguys are taking that in as part
of the details, and you're soright.
I mean, there are so manyfranchise owners that Jill and I
talked to that do not knowtheir numbers that if you say
(17:50):
give me a P&L, they're like holdon, let me talk to my
accountant.
You've got to have that stuff.
You've got to know your numbers.
You've got to.
In my opinion, you better bechecking that P&L three times a
week.
I think if you can keep yourlabor not talking about like
your manager or something likethat, but the talent that's
making the pizza if you canreally pin that to 25% of your
gross revenue, I think you'redoing great.
(18:10):
But yeah, the magic to successin business ownership is knowing
your numbers and having urgencyaround sales.
What does this week look like?
What does next week look like?
How are we doing compared tolast month?
Knowing your numbers, beingurgent to drive sales and grow
that's really the key to beingsuccessful and it sounds like
you guys are on the right trackto doing that.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, what's great is I mean we have, uh, I had to
carry a heavy labor for thefirst few months because of
training, where I'm creeping upinto that 33%, uh, you know,
labor to revenue, which is notwhere you want to be as a
restaurant, um, but as my team'sgotten better and then I can
kind of just have aces play, youknow the best player at each
(18:54):
position, where now I'm at 23,24% labor.
That's including, you know, allmy admin.
I'm doing most of the adminmyself, but it's including, you
know, all the front of housestaff, the dishwasher person.
It's um, where, as I've gottenbetter, my labor's gone down.
My food costs have gone down aswell, just because I'm not
(19:17):
throwing away as many pizzas.
I'm at like 21%, uh, 21 and ahalf percent on my cost of goods
.
Pizza might cost just a fewdollars to go out.
We're selling it for 14.
So it's uh, we're in a reallygood, um, neapolitan style.
It's high demand, it's cheap tomake and you can sell it for a
(19:38):
lot higher uh price point than adomino's no no, and you're
doing great.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
I think, honestly, in your first year, if you're even
under 40 on the labor, you'regreat because you, like you said
, you could have time to figureit out.
And I I think, by year two, ifyou can even under 40% on the
labor, you're great Cause you,like you said, you get up time
to figure it out.
And I think, by year two, ifyou can get it to 25% which
sounds like you're alreadyalmost there um, then you're
doing it right.
I mean, it sounds likeeverything you know that you're
doing is growing in a verypositive direction.
Now, now we just need to cometry some of this pizza.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, yeah, you got to.
I'm in salem oregon, so if youever find yourself in oregon or
go up to seattle or idaho,there's a franchisee in idaho as
well, so it's really good pizza.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
We're going, we're going to be in seattle next
month, we're going to go andwe're going to uh, we're going
to document it, but this hasbeen so great.
Thank you for joining ourpodcast and and just to share
with everyone out there.
For those of you that areinterested in casascadia Pizza,
you know the drill Text us at305-710-450.
We'd be happy to check and seeif your territory is still
available.
(20:37):
My thoughts are is that thisone's going to grow pretty
quickly, so it's a goodopportunity to get your hat in
the ring and start exploringthis really unique franchise
opportunity in a proven sector.
Jill any other thoughts?
Questions.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
No, I think it's really exciting.
We've been kind of waiting forthis for a while so we've had a
lot of like prior interest.
We have obviously interestourself personally, just because
we love it.
So it's really fun to hear yourstory and your guys' success
and you know we wish you guysall the best and let's see how
many we can help you guys.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
So absolutely right.
Thank you for joining ourpodcast.
Yeah, thank you have.
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