Mike Burns took over the &pizza chain just as the brand was losing its edge. He quickly revived its cult following, bringing back the tattoo promotion that drew 2,700 fans and the Pi Day weddings where couples tie the knot — literally, with dough.
Watch now to learn about turning customers into superfans, empowering staff, and building a brand that breaks the rules.
Watch now to learn about turning customers into superfans, empowering staff, and building a brand that breaks the rules.
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00:00First 100 people that want a tattoo get free pizza for a year.
00:032,700 people signed up to get a tattoo on the first day.
00:07Yes.
00:07So I had my moment of like, before I started going like,
00:11this thing's pretty cool.
00:12It has a vibe.
00:13And then getting here and seeing all this was pretty broken.
00:15And then we send one Instagram post and almost 3,000 people, you know,
00:19wanted to get a tattoo.
00:25Welcome to Restaurant Influencers presented by Entrepreneur.
00:28I'm your host, Sean Walsh.
00:29This is a Cali BBQ media production.
00:32In life, in the restaurant business, and in the new creator economy,
00:36we learn through lessons and stories.
00:38We started this show in 2022, back when we pitched Toast,
00:43our primary technology partner at our restaurants,
00:45that we were also not just a barbecue business, but also a media company.
00:49And that we wanted to find the best storytellers in the hospitality space,
00:53have them on the show, share their secrets.
00:56Today, I have Mike Burns, the new CEO of AND Pizza.
01:02I have been a huge fan from afar of the AND Pizza brand.
01:07And I'm really excited for today's conversation.
01:09Mike, welcome to the show.
01:10Yeah, thanks, Sean.
01:11I'm really happy to be here.
01:11Thanks for having me.
01:12Of course.
01:13Let's start with my favorite random question,
01:16which is where in the world is your favorite stadium, stage, or venue?
01:21Easy.
01:21Fenway Park, Boston.
01:23Born and raised in Boston.
01:25Baseball is a religion.
01:27I mean, yeah.
01:28I mean, Fenway, there's nothing to beat Fenway Park.
01:30Nothing.
01:31Beautiful.
01:31Well, we're going to go to Fenway, and that's going to be an easy sell,
01:34because Toast is also in Boston.
01:35So I'll talk to our friends at Toast.
01:37We're going to rent out Fenway.
01:38We'll talk to Entrepreneur.
01:40We'll get some AND Pizza brands.
01:41But we're going to fill it with what we call people that play the game within the game.
01:45This hospitality business is hard as hell.
01:48The people that dedicate their lives to it, we know how difficult it is,
01:52but we also know how beautiful it can be if you do it right.
01:55We're going to fill the stadium.
01:56I'm going to put you on the pitcher's mound, give you a mic, and say,
02:00Mike, I need to hear the story of your first 72 hours as the new CEO of AND Pizza.
02:06Tell us some stories.
02:07Tell us some lessons.
02:09So I found out we didn't have an office.
02:11So it's one of the questions you would think during the interview process.
02:14Like, I know I didn't go to the office during the interview, but that's also,
02:17to me, the least important part of running a restaurant, right?
02:20Who cares about the office?
02:21People in the field are all that matters.
02:23So I show up in DC, and I'm like, where do I go?
02:26And they send me to this address, and it's just, it's AND Pizza.
02:30And I meet with the HR people and the head of ops.
02:33And I'm like, all right, where's the office?
02:35They're like, we don't have it.
02:36Nobody told you?
02:37I'm like, no, nobody told me.
02:38So which is actually the beauty of AND Pizza in so many ways.
02:42Like, it's all about the restaurants, the people in the restaurants,
02:45the vibe in the restaurants.
02:46You can't get that vibe in an office.
02:48We had a couple.
02:49We had a shared space we used with a restaurant.
02:51And we had a board meeting there, like my first month there.
02:53And there's like hip-hop music playing in the background.
02:55You're trying to review financials from 2023 with Method Man blasting,
03:00which is, the board's like, maybe you should get an office.
03:03And I'm like, no, I like life without an office.
03:05It's easier, like a little more freedom and flexibility.
03:07So that was the first 72 hours.
03:11What, when you took over, what were the biggest things that you wanted to address?
03:18The biggest thing was operations, right?
03:20I mean, operations and culture were the top two.
03:22AND was a brand founded in 2012.
03:24Michael Astoria calls himself Pizza Jesus.
03:27And if you've seen Michael, you know why.
03:28Long hair, long beard.
03:30Just a great guy, still involved heavily from the creative side.
03:35And he had built this beautiful brand.
03:37And you went in, and it was different.
03:38It was more of a lifestyle experience than a pizza experience.
03:41The food was phenomenal.
03:42But you came in and got to walk the line and hear the music and see the people.
03:46And people could be who they wanted to be,
03:48hats on backwards, hoodies, which is like my everyday attire.
03:50So that was a big bonus to come work here.
03:53But I mean, that to me was missing, right?
03:56When I went through the interview process,
03:57I watched a lot of videos and how AND started.
04:00And I toured restaurants.
04:01And I was like, where did this go?
04:02It just wasn't there anymore.
04:04So a lot of it was ops driven.
04:06People came in and got a little too corporate.
04:08Michael moved back to New York and left some other folks in charge.
04:10And you can't be super corporate here.
04:13It's just not the vibe, especially in DC and the areas that we're in.
04:18Again, I keep talking about the vibe and feel of it.
04:21You can't have your standard operators.
04:22You got to be able to play with guests and have the guests play back with you.
04:25And it's about, again, the whole experience in the restaurant.
04:28But we had to fix ops.
04:29We slowed down over the years.
04:30We had done some things to cut corners to save on food costs,
04:34which hurt customer count because the food wasn't as good.
04:38We changed food distributors without really a plan.
04:41So we just had to come in and basic nuts and bolts and reset the foundation of the shops.
04:45And really, it was hiring all new operators.
04:48We hired a new VP of Ops who'd been to a couple of stops with me before.
04:51He said, hey, I need you to move across the country.
04:53He's like, yep, where are we going?
04:54So he came.
04:55He's sleeve tattoos, head to toe.
04:59He's 35.
04:59He looks like he's 10.
05:00I mean, he fits right in with the vibe of our shops.
05:03And then we promoted all of our district managers.
05:06Now we call them district leaders or all internal promotions.
05:08So they all worked in a shop, grew up in a shop,
05:11started off as an assistant manager, became a shop leader.
05:14And now they're district leaders.
05:15And they're kicking ass.
05:16I mean, they're doing a great job.
05:17But because they know, it's hard to teach what we do without working in the shops.
05:21I mean, it's just different.
05:23When you think back when you're doing your research on the brand,
05:27or maybe even before you even considered for the position,
05:32the truth vibrates the fastest.
05:34I think when you hear the truth, it makes you stop scrolling on social media.
05:39It makes you stand still at a conference.
05:41If you're at a stadium and somebody mic drops a moment,
05:44you're like, holy shit, that's the thing.
05:47That's the thing that we're chasing.
05:48Do you remember what the truth was that compelled you
05:53to want this opportunity with Anpizza?
05:57Part of it, yeah.
05:57I mean, I was told it was a cult experience, right?
06:01Like DC loves Anpizza.
06:02It's part of the fabric.
06:04And I've worked in restaurants my whole life.
06:06And I've been around and grew up on the East Coast.
06:09And I've heard of it.
06:11So I went through the interview process.
06:14They gave me a t-shirt.
06:15I'm wearing it now, the big ampersand on it.
06:17And I put it on, went and had a beer.
06:20And I'm sitting there having a beer by myself.
06:22And the server behind the counter was like, do you work for Anpizza?
06:25I said, no, I'm trying to.
06:27And she's like, what are you trying to do?
06:28I said, I'm just trying to run a shop.
06:30What do you think of, should I go?
06:33It's the best fucking pizza in DC.
06:36You need to work at Anpizza.
06:37And she was like, who do I need to talk to?
06:38I'm like, I don't know.
06:39I'll work on it.
06:40Let me see.
06:41She's like, I used to go there years ago.
06:43And I stopped going.
06:44I'm like, why'd you stop?
06:45She's like, the food isn't as good anymore.
06:47She's like, the music's not loud.
06:48The food's not as good.
06:49The people aren't as friendly.
06:50It's lost its edge.
06:52And to me, I was like, OK.
06:54So that was kind of light bulb moment number one.
06:56I played sports my whole life.
06:58Still, my best friends are the guys I played basketball with in college.
07:03They're good people.
07:04And that, to me, is about building a family, building a trust, building that kind of stuff.
07:08And restaurants are the same way.
07:09I grew up 14 years old working at a Burger King.
07:12And my dad told me, everybody should work in a restaurant because you learn hard work,
07:16and values, and teamwork.
07:18And customers don't treat you the best at that level.
07:21And so I've always managed from bottom up.
07:24I think the cashier and the pizza maker is the most important people in the brand.
07:29And then if I quit tomorrow, the place still runs.
07:31If the manager doesn't show up, the place doesn't open.
07:33So that kind of tells you what it should be like.
07:36That was moment number one.
07:38She told me that, hey, this was really cool.
07:39And now it's not.
07:41And then two, they were talking about this tattoo program they used to have.
07:44And I said, what do you mean, the tattoo program?
07:46I said, yeah, we call our team FAM.
07:48The FAM can get a tattoo.
07:49We'll pay for it.
07:51I'm like, who in their right mind would get a tattoo of where they worked?
07:54And then I'm going to restaurants, and all these people have these ampersand tattoos.
07:57And then they said, yeah, we used to do this deal.
07:59We opened up a restaurant.
08:00The first 100 people in line got a tattoo.
08:02And I'm like, there's no way.
08:04So I'm like, let's do it again.
08:05When's the last time we did it?
08:06They're like, 2018.
08:07So I went and got one.
08:08I'm like, I got one on my forearm, right?
08:10Like, real, can't hide that I work here now.
08:12And a bunch of the guys in the team got them too.
08:15And we were like three months in the company.
08:17We believed that this thing was going to go.
08:18We had posted something on Instagram.
08:21Hey, first 100 people that want a tattoo, get free pizza for a year.
08:24It's like one pizza a week for 52 weeks.
08:282,700 people signed up to get a tattoo on the first day.
08:32Yes.
08:32So I had my moment of like, before I started going like, this thing's pretty cool.
08:37It has a vibe.
08:38And then getting here and seeing all this was pretty broken.
08:40And then we send one Instagram post and almost 3,000 people, you know, wanted to get a tattoo.
08:45So what'd you do?
08:47We got first, we picked 100.
08:49We had, we started narrowing it down.
08:50We had people tell this, like, why do you want it?
08:52Do you want just because you want free pizza?
08:53And one guy was like, yeah, we're like, all right, fine.
08:55Like you're honest.
08:56Like you can get the, you'll have this on your arm for life.
08:59But people just told the story.
09:01Like I met my wife and pizza or like, that was my first job.
09:04Or like, I just really like it.
09:05Or I liked that.
09:06It was crazy to me.
09:08And, you know, I'm like, look, you got to respect what Chick-fil-A is doing,
09:11but I don't see anybody with a cow tattooed on their body.
09:13Right.
09:13Like it's just a different.
09:15So, you know, this thing has legs.
09:16Like people are passionate about the brand.
09:18They like it.
09:19We also do this things where we marry people on Pi Day.
09:22You know, most pizza places, it's like $3 and 14 cents pies or three pies for $14.
09:26And like, whatever, like who cares?
09:28So like we married people on Pi Day.
09:30Another thing we stopped same thing last year.
09:32I'm like, all right, like fine.
09:33You guys want to send something out and let's see who wants it.
09:3690 couples apply to get married at a pizza shop.
09:40Like, and they literally tie a doughnut.
09:42Like that's how they tie the knot.
09:43Like they tie a knot and they.
09:45Michael comes back and marries them.
09:47And, you know, they get married by pizza, Jesus and a pizza place.
09:50And you're open free pizza afterwards.
09:52And it's crazy.
09:54And a lot of those people have the tattoo.
09:55They've gotten married.
09:56Like the stories behind those to pick four people to get married,
10:00four couples to get married last year out of 90 applicants was crazy.
10:04We've got two more this year.
10:06So, I mean, it's just, it's nonstop.
10:07It's awesome.
10:08Like nobody else is doing that stuff.
10:10No, absolutely not.
10:11I mean, that's to be honest with you.
10:13It gives me chills because I know why we do this show.
10:18It's bigger.
10:19It's bigger than DC.
10:20It's bigger than San Diego, where I'm from.
10:22This is, you know, hospitality is all over the globe.
10:25And it's these kinds of stories that inspires owners, operators,
10:29frontline workers to think differently.
10:31You know, we have a special opportunity.
10:32And when you do it right, you get that cult following.
10:35You get those 2700 people that are willing to show up to literally put
10:41your brand, your logo on their body for life.
10:44Like forget about the 52 weeks of free pizza.
10:46Like that's on there, right?
10:48Not only is it on their body for life, but it's also a story that they get to tell
10:52to all of the people that they come in contact.
10:54So back to your basketball example, when that person's on the basketball pickup
10:58court and they have an ampersand tattoo, like, hey, what does that ampersand mean?
11:02Oh, you have no idea.
11:03I got it for free and I've got this.
11:04And, you know, this is the pizza that I like.
11:06I mean, that is really, really fucking cool.
11:09Yeah, it's wild.
11:10We did a TV spot where somebody in marketing went on TV and talked about some
11:13promotion we were running.
11:14And at the end of it, the producer came from behind and he starts taking his shirt
11:18off and he shows he's got this ampersand tattoo on his arm from nine years ago.
11:22So here we are getting free advertisement on a news station about our tattoos,
11:26which is cool.
11:27Do not skip this ad.
11:29This is important information.
11:31I unboxed toast, our point of sale at our barbecue restaurants.
11:35And now here I am interviewing Shaquille O'Neal on the biggest stages.
11:40We want to hear your toast story.
11:43If you use toast in your restaurant, send me a message at Sean P.
11:48Walsh on Instagram, S-H-A-W-N-P-W-A-L-C-H-E-F.
11:55We want to hear your toast story.
11:56If you're thinking about switching to toast, we would love to help you.
12:00Please send us a message so that we can share your toast story today.
12:07Can you share?
12:09You're one of the first guests that openly talked about hoops and your love of hoops.
12:14How is running a restaurant like basketball, like a pickup game of basketball?
12:20It's funny.
12:20So I have a lot of friends of mine that are in the NBA or coach college basketball.
12:24I think it's the same, right?
12:26You see the NBA is shifted.
12:28You have the traditional center and power forward, small forward.
12:32It's not that anymore.
12:33It's positionless like basketball, right?
12:35That's the beauty.
12:36To me, basketball is the most beautiful game out there because you have five really athletic
12:40people, and now there's no real defined roles.
12:43So the first meeting I had with the executive team here was,
12:45hey, we're going to be a positionless executive team.
12:48Yes, you have a title.
12:49But my head of HR runs training, op services.
12:54She's coordinating a wedding.
12:57She's the one who organized tattoos.
12:58We did a big promotion last year, 420, and she's handing out rolling papers with our
13:01brand on it on the side of the road.
13:03That's the HR person, right?
13:05The IT guy is at an ops conference this week.
13:07Everybody, we're small.
13:09We have to be scrappy.
13:10But everybody plays in each other's sandbox, and everybody kind of likes it.
13:13But like a team, you're going hard, right?
13:17This is a turnaround, even though it's been a 12-year-old brand trying to fix it.
13:20There's always, and our coach in college used to tell us, until a fight breaks out,
13:24you guys aren't ready to play.
13:26And I remember some meeting we had six months ago.
13:28All of a sudden, people just started bickering about stuff.
13:30And I'm like, all right, we're ready.
13:31Everybody's irritated.
13:33This is exactly what we want because it was respectful bickering, right?
13:37Everybody wants to win.
13:38The goal is the same.
13:39It wasn't bitching about a process.
13:42It wasn't bitching about something we were doing.
13:43It was really like, hey, you need to get your shit together because I'm doing this over here.
13:47I need you to pull your weight.
13:50And since then, it's been...
13:51This is the most fun job I've ever had, not just because I'm leading the team, but because
13:54it's a really fun team.
13:57And every day is different.
13:58It isn't every restaurant, but to really, truly...
14:01This team has bought into positionless executive team.
14:04And it's been great.
14:06Again, not having an office makes you do that.
14:09We're going to meet.
14:09You meet in a restaurant.
14:11You can't meet somewhere else.
14:13I love the basketball analogy, the positionless players and thinking of executives.
14:19I grew up playing pickup hoops, actually.
14:21My son started playing basketball, so I'm starting to teach him.
14:24And I'm just missing the game of pickup hoops.
14:26But when it's correlated to the business of restaurants, there are so many similarities
14:31of the companies that win.
14:34How you pick somebody based off of what they look like doesn't mean that that's
14:38actually going to be how they're going to perform on the court when you're picking a
14:42team.
14:43And I've never thought about the conflict before and the tension.
14:47Can you go a little bit deeper of if there isn't conflict and there isn't tension, if
14:51there isn't belief in the team?
14:54So once you find that fight, you know that something's worth fighting for.
14:58Yeah, and it's my job to corral it, right?
15:02We interviewed some people today for a controller position, and I told them both.
15:06I said, look, you're going to work with a bunch of lunatics.
15:09And it's not in a bad way.
15:11That's just who people can be who they want to be.
15:14They can just be yourself, come to work, work hard.
15:18We're all trying to go for a common goal.
15:20And I think when you do that, just like in families, you fight with your brother or sister
15:24growing up.
15:25Doesn't mean you don't love that person, but you fight with them.
15:27If you're indifferent, that's the worst thing.
15:29And I think that's where customers with us became.
15:32They became indifferent.
15:33We were just, oh, that's the place that used to be cool.
15:37So that bothered me.
15:38I mean, COVID changed a lot of the way people ate and different patterns.
15:42But we lost our way before COVID.
15:45And then during COVID, it was just game over.
15:46So it's really to have this collective group of people like Voltron, right, all come together
15:51and all have their own role and peace and do their thing was really important.
15:54But everybody's a little crazy, which kind of makes it fun.
15:58But the beautiful thing is most restaurant companies don't celebrate the crazy, but the
16:04crazy what's make us unique.
16:06And I think that's something that you guys have obviously built the foundationally and
16:11pizza, this culture that you came into.
16:14But this is something that you're reviving and reviving.
16:16It takes time.
16:17It's not something that you can just flip on the switch.
16:20Can you name, can you talk about some of the specifics that you guys have done to really
16:25find out like, why do these people, why does everyone love our brand as much as they do?
16:31Again, I think it's the vibe.
16:33I think it's the feel.
16:33I think they can come be who they are, right?
16:35If you see people online and the music's cranked up, like they start bobbing their head.
16:40They start talking to people like we, if people post stuff on Instagram or TikTok of it, like
16:44then it just, it goes crazy in DC.
16:47We've got to replicate that everywhere.
16:48We have a few late night shops that are open till four in the morning, like right near a
16:52bar or club.
16:53I'm telling you after midnight in those places, it's more fun than the bar or the club.
16:56Like they have no seats.
16:57The music's loud.
16:58We had somebody bring his own boombox in one night or like a big speaker.
17:01We turned our music off and let him play in the dining room.
17:04But our team gives out what, the customers give us what we give to them.
17:09So if they see us behind the line and people's hats on backwards, we call them andandas.
17:13It's a bandana with ampersands all over them.
17:15They can wear those.
17:16It's just a fun vibe.
17:19I don't know.
17:19I think the customers are starting to feel it.
17:22They're starting to come back.
17:23We're starting to embrace them in the family again.
17:25So we've gone back to our roots.
17:27We've gone away from this, you know, tuck your shirt and turn your hat around like that
17:30kind of nonsense.
17:31It's a restaurant.
17:32It's not like it's a restaurant.
17:34Tell me about the tribe members, your employees.
17:37How do you inspire?
17:39They're the best part of my day.
17:40Like I think we have just like any, you know, restaurant worker, especially their first
17:46job, like they're trying to make ends meet.
17:48They're not making a ton of money.
17:49I think we pay above what most people pay in the market.
17:52We were on the first for the fight for 15, which everybody said was going to put us everybody
17:55out of business.
17:56And everybody's kind of eventually caught up to us, which had to make us step our game
18:00up a little bit.
18:01But I mean, but they they're the lifeblood of the business.
18:05I think and I've told people all the time, like sometimes coming to work is the best
18:09part of that person's day.
18:11Like who knows what they have going on at home, right?
18:13Like maybe they're fighting with their mom or their dad or their wife or their girlfriend
18:16or their kids sick or like somebody like who knows what happened.
18:19But when they come to work, like that should be a safe haven for them.
18:22They should be able to come there, work, do their job, you know, go home at the end of
18:26the day, make a little bit of money, maybe make a friend along the way, like whatever.
18:29But we really try to take care of our people.
18:32We give them time off to vote.
18:33We give them time off for act for to do like they're an activist.
18:36They want it, whatever they want to protest or support or whatever, like you want a day
18:40off.
18:40We'll give you one paid day off a year to go do that.
18:42So we, again, believe people can believe whatever they want.
18:47And I think in this political climate we're in right now is important.
18:49Like there's people on both sides that have lost their minds.
18:53And I think our team, you know, feels that every day.
18:56So they can come in and there's no second.
18:58They can be whoever you want.
19:00And there's nobody judging you in our in our shops.
19:02And it's a safe place for them.
19:03And I feel really proud about that.
19:05That's a safe place for them.
19:06How many stores are you guys at right now?
19:09We're at 45.
19:11When I came in, we had a little bit more than that.
19:13One of the things I asked for the board before I accepted the role was, hey, look,
19:17because of COVID, the world shifted.
19:19Real estate shifted in some markets.
19:20Ops was broken.
19:22I need to be able to close whatever I think I need to close.
19:25We'll fight with the landlords down the road, but we need to close some restaurants and
19:29reset the portfolio.
19:30And we did.
19:31We closed 11.
19:32It sucks because you lose a couple district managers and 11 shop leaders.
19:36Now we've placed most of the people back in different restaurants, which is great.
19:39We lost very few people, but we closed some markets like New York.
19:42It didn't make sense for us.
19:44It's a pizza market, right?
19:45You go to New York, I want the big giant slice of pizza with grease dripping down my arm.
19:49I don't want one that looks like a skateboard.
19:51And everything in New York is cheap, expensive, except for pizza.
19:53So for us to go in New York and charge $13 for a pie didn't make a lot of sense.
19:59But we've just reset the portfolio, and now we're at a baseline where it makes operational
20:04sense and financial sense to be where we're at.
20:07And tell me about why franchising for expansion?
20:11We can grow faster.
20:12We can grow faster.
20:13You can trim some costs at the upper level.
20:16We can grow faster in different markets, right?
20:18If I have 2 company restaurants in Nevada right now, how am I going to...
20:23It's going to cost me more money to travel up there and check on them.
20:25And I've been in other brands that expand all over.
20:28You see brands doing it today.
20:30They expand company restaurants all over the globe.
20:32And then they're out of business in a couple years.
20:34To me, franchising...
20:36We want people that own something else already.
20:39This is another piece of their portfolio, because we all know the first year is tough.
20:42It's hard to make money in the first year of opening a restaurant.
20:45So we want them to have some cushion with their other businesses.
20:48And it allows us to expand and get the end out there faster.
20:52And if we want an open company restaurant, I could probably open four a year right now.
20:56Franchise, I can open five times that.
20:59How are you going to vet the people that you bring in to the franchise organization?
21:05We bring them to our office, right?
21:07Your office?
21:09Yeah. We've had somebody come in last week.
21:11They're like, we'll meet your office.
21:12Like, okay.
21:12We give them an address and they walk in.
21:14They're like, is the office upstairs?
21:15Like, no, this is it.
21:17Nothing else matters except the restaurants.
21:18So they have to be okay with that.
21:21We make them go through our social media to make sure they're comfortable with that.
21:23Obviously, there's financial qualifications and some other stuff.
21:26But you've got to be okay with...
21:28Like I show up like this.
21:30I'm not going to wear a sport coat and a button down.
21:33This is who you get.
21:34So if you're not okay with that, we're probably not the right brand for you.
21:40And that's okay.
21:41It's really they have to fit with us culturally.
21:43But we have them go behind the lines, spend some time with the fam.
21:47They meet our chef.
21:49So there's different people we purposely have them meet.
21:52And they kind of have to pass a litmus test with all of those people.
21:54Like, hey, everybody said we like this person.
21:56Let's pursue it and go from there.
21:59And pizza.
22:00When I look at what you guys do on social with branding,
22:04I can't help but think about Liquid Death.
22:07Can you share how you differentiate yourself?
22:11Or if you're more similar to Liquid Death than I think?
22:16No, I think I respect what those guys have done.
22:20A big market share coming in, just louder than everybody else.
22:23I think we want to play in that arena.
22:26We want to be loud.
22:26We want to be brash.
22:27We got to be very careful not to piss people off, especially in DC.
22:31And haven't you pissed people off recently?
22:33We have pissed people off recently.
22:35Wait for that to come up.
22:3622 minutes it took you.
22:39But yeah, I mean, look, I mean, you got to take a shot sometimes.
22:42And sometimes you have advisors for certain things and you miss something
22:46and you apologize for it and you move on.
22:48I mean, we're not all perfect.
22:51We're going to make mistakes, but we're not going to make mistakes.
22:53We're going to make mistakes, but we're not going to keep trying.
22:57Like we'll be smarter about certain things,
22:59but we're still going to play in the arena that we play in.
23:02Like we have to be brash and bold and probably not political,
23:07but like we can still dabble in some other areas that we think gives us a different...
23:11Like 420 is like our Super Bowl.
23:13Yeah.
23:14So that's a big deal for us, you know, again, marrying people.
23:16And we had a married last year, a trans couple, a straight couple, a gay couple.
23:20Like it was really cool to have...
23:21I mean, the ampersand stands for unity, right?
23:23When the first restaurant was built, it was on the corner of H Street.
23:26So we called it H and Pizza.
23:28It was hard to replicate that.
23:30You can't have 40 restaurants with 40 different names,
23:32but that's the very first shop still says H and Pizza.
23:35It's supposed to be connectedness of the neighborhood
23:38and the pizza is supposed to bring everybody together.
23:41So that's what the ampersand stands for, unity.
23:44You know, we've slipped a little bit over the summer
23:46and we were unified with some people that we, you know, this is where it is.
23:52Was there something that happened that I don't know about?
23:55We're not talking about the Dickel Pizza, are we?
23:57No, no, no.
23:58So the Dickel was amazing.
24:00The Dickel was...
24:00The Dickel is one of my favorite things that you guys did.
24:04Dickel's great.
24:05So the Dickel, again, everybody has a voice.
24:09We're trying to name the Dill Pickle.
24:11It was called the Dill Pickle Pizza the year before.
24:12It was the first year it launched, right?
24:14So we were in a meeting and I had a supply chain.
24:19Like I just ordered some Dickels and she's like,
24:21I mean, Dill Pickle.
24:22And we're like, that's it.
24:23It's the Dickel.
24:24Like that's it.
24:25Do you know how many things we can do with the Dickel?
24:27Like it was perfect.
24:30And it launches in a couple of weeks here again.
24:33We're bringing it back.
24:35People like it.
24:36I mean, our mascots are a bunch of presidents, right?
24:40Like Abe Lincoln with a mohawk and George Washington with a nose ring
24:44and Ben Franklin with a neck tattoo.
24:46And they ran around DC and gave out free Dickel for everybody.
24:50And they told people like, here's your pizza.
24:53Tell us what you want.
24:54And like the amount of eat our Dickels or like this Dickel's too big for me.
24:58Like it was just great.
25:01So one of our other shows that we do is called Digital Hospitality.
25:04And it refers to a deep thesis that we have that every business has to be digital first.
25:08And every business is in the hospitality business, whether they know it or not.
25:12You guys have always been a tech forward pizza brand.
25:15Can you share the evolution of where you guys were and what you did once you took over?
25:20Yeah, I think a lot of restaurants do this.
25:24Tech is sexy, right?
25:25Especially a founder led company like restaurants at some point get boring, right?
25:28Except for lunatics like us.
25:31And like technology is important.
25:33And you think there's a reason certain places don't have certain things yet
25:38is because they're not ready to launch, right?
25:40So we built this own internal POS system that had a lot of bells and whistles.
25:45But you had to have a staff of like 15 people to run it.
25:48And you're gonna ask me like, what's gonna make money?
25:51It's 15 people in the restaurant, not 15 people in an IT department.
25:54So we made the strategic decision to kind of shelve it.
25:58And we went with Toast, Olo, and Thanks,
26:00as opposed to trying to do our own loyalty program
26:02and our own aggregator and all this other stuff.
26:05So Toast was a partner with us a little bit.
26:07Like we're the only people that I think use Toast just for like the pad at the front.
26:12But now it's full blown integration.
26:14It's so seamless.
26:15So whether somebody places an order online in a shop,
26:18we have kiosks now, Toast kiosks.
26:20We've just turned on AI ordering.
26:22So you can call up now and order.
26:23It also gets injected.
26:25So everything is connected now.
26:27You can clock in and out on the register
26:28where before you had a time clock in the back of the kitchen.
26:31It's just streamlined everything.
26:33And let the people that are good at the technology piece run the technology piece.
26:36We also had a dough facility where we made our own dough balls,
26:40but it was taking away from operations.
26:42So we shut down dough facility, same exact dough,
26:44moved it over to people that actually make dough for a living
26:47and bought it from them.
26:48So I mean, the operations restaurants have to be the main thing.
26:52And we've made them the main thing again.
26:55How do you guys look at your real estate selection for your new stores?
27:00The strategy before was to go in the Northeast.
27:02And I think we talked about that a little bit.
27:03It's hard.
27:04It's super seasonal.
27:06It's expensive.
27:08We're trying to fill in the gap of maybe not your traditional pizza markets, right?
27:12We're looking into Carolinas, college towns.
27:14We do really well in college towns.
27:16Our social media plays great with college kids.
27:18So the Southeast and probably the Southwest.
27:22Texas is a difficult market for us, but Austin would be great.
27:25So we're looking at really fun, eclectic towns that have a need for pizza.
27:30We'd never go to Chicago.
27:32We want to stay away from big pizza regions.
27:34But that's college campuses, college towns,
27:38kind of like the second city in a market,
27:40like maybe not Charlotte, but Raleigh or something like that.
27:44Can you share social media strategy?
27:46Do you guys have an internal team?
27:47Do you outsource it?
27:48How do you guys go about content creation and storytelling?
27:52A little bit of both.
27:53It was all done internally before.
27:55And again, it takes away from operations.
27:58So we've hired a creative agency out of Charlotte, Boone Oakley.
28:04They do great work for us.
28:05They've done their disruptors in the industry.
28:07So they help craft our social.
28:09But there's nothing that goes out that we don't know about or touch
28:13or have our fingerprints on.
28:15So if something's great, it's on us.
28:17If something sucks, it's on us.
28:19Like everything falls on us, which it should,
28:20because we make the final decisions.
28:21We can't blame anything on anybody else.
28:23But it's a mix.
28:25Like we try to figure out what's going on in culture
28:28or what a hot trend is or what, you know, and we try to play on that.
28:32The longer that I do this show and the longer that I've been myself
28:36in the restaurant business, it's coming up on seven.
28:38420 is actually our birthday.
28:39So our Cali barbecue, we're going to be celebrating 17 years,
28:42three locations in San Diego.
28:45The harder it is for me to remember the things that I fucked up, my failures,
28:49you know, and I know that the people that are watching this,
28:52that are listening to this, those are the things that probably
28:55they're going to learn the most from.
28:57Do you have any stories of failures, either at a previous position
29:00or just along the way that you can remember
29:03that you haven't buried deeply as a scar?
29:07For sure.
29:07I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, I think anytime you get like,
29:11I was at Bojangles restaurants for a long time and you get up.
29:14I grew up in the system, ran one restaurant,
29:16ended up running 200 by the time I left.
29:18And it was a fun journey.
29:20I think sometimes you forget where you came from.
29:22So I left and went to a different brand and you think you're smarter.
29:26No, no better than them.
29:27And you kind of come in and you'd like either wait.
29:30You wait too long on something.
29:32I waited too long on some people decisions like,
29:34oh, this guy's a good guy.
29:35I really like him.
29:35Let's keep him.
29:36No one in the back of my head, like he's probably not going to make it.
29:39And there's other people that I'm like, I need to, you know,
29:41this person needs to go because it's going to prove a point.
29:44And those are both, you know, not great.
29:47So I think I've come in,
29:49slowed down a little bit and like made assessments,
29:51but make decisions really fast.
29:53Like you have to come in, even here,
29:55like the entire executive team's changed out.
29:57Like we had to, it was a losing team for four years.
30:01Sometimes you change the coach out.
30:02The assistant coaches leave too.
30:04And we brought new people in.
30:05But you got to do it fast.
30:06You got to be swift and you got to be firm about it.
30:09And not everybody's going to like it.
30:11But, you know, at the end of the day,
30:13the business is more important than,
30:15and the King is more important than the King, right?
30:17Like you have to protect the restaurants more than you protect the people.
30:21How do you learn?
30:22How do you keep yourself cutting edge as a CEO?
30:27I mean, I surround myself with really smart people.
30:29I think not only in the restaurant industry,
30:31but other industries like, again,
30:33I have a lot of friends that are in the NBA or scouts that, you know,
30:36try to get together on the phone once a month
30:39and talk about different things that are working in their businesses, right?
30:42Like some movie producer friends out in California that, you know, same thing.
30:46Like, I think if you just listen to restaurant people,
30:49like I hate going to restaurant conferences
30:51because it's the same 50 people
30:53talking about the same 50 things 50 times a year.
30:55Like they drive, like you have to go to some,
30:57but like the people that go to all of them drive me.
30:59It's the same thing.
31:00Like you're not learning anything.
31:01Like when do you ever go to work?
31:02So to me, I like to surround myself with people outside the industry
31:08and listen to what they have to say, what's working, what's not.
31:10Like, especially in the athletics,
31:12like they know what's happening before anybody else does.
31:14Like the trends and, you know, what's hot and what's not.
31:17I mean, it's kind of, that's what I do.
31:20I'm not saying it's the right thing.
31:21To me, you can sit there and read and go to a conference all day long.
31:24It doesn't teach anything.
31:24And you got to surround yourself with really smart people, not in the business.
31:28Do you have any mentors that have taught you something
31:30that you've actually implemented?
31:33Yeah.
31:34I mean, I've had a few, I mean, a few different CEOs that I've worked for.
31:36I think the biggest mentor for me is my old college basketball coach,
31:41division three school in Massachusetts, Emerson college played there
31:45under a man named Hank Smith.
31:46And we played there.
31:49It was like, we had no gym.
31:51So when I interviewed here with like no office,
31:52like we didn't have a gym.
31:54We played with three different home gyms.
31:57Like it was crazy.
31:58So we, uh, we just did a court dedication in his honor like a month ago.
32:03We've all been out of school for like 25 years.
32:05So to bring us all back to like, now they have a gym,
32:07they have a home to go to where we didn't,
32:09we feel proud about that because we were kind of the foundation,
32:12but he was very, no nonsense, super disciplined, but always very fair.
32:17And it was always, Hey, for the two hours a day that I have you,
32:19I'm going to be the biggest motherfucker that you've ever met in your life.
32:23The other 22 hours a day, like we're going to get along great.
32:26Like I'll take care of you and mentor you like forever.
32:28So I think that's kind of the same way here.
32:31Like people know we can have a lot of fun, but there's guardrails.
32:33Like you step outside the guardrail, you just can't work here anymore.
32:36You know, it doesn't mean you're not a nice person.
32:38You just can't be on the team.
32:39So he's taught me that.
32:40And he's, there's a lot of us that talk all the time because of him.
32:44And if it's instilled his values and discipline in every facet of
32:48different businesses and that stuff.
32:52How far out is long-term planning for you?
32:54I mean, tomorrow, I mean, I know we,
32:58something happens every day, right?
32:59But no, we have, we have a, we have all, we have a million different strategy plans.
33:04We have a three week, a three month, a six month, a year.
33:06We planned out the 2030 right now.
33:09We feel like five years is probably in the next year, it'll be a 2031.
33:13So we always have a five year strat plan.
33:15The first year was just setting the foundation.
33:17Now we can actually slow down a little bit and actually see what this looks like in two,
33:21three, four, five years.
33:22And again, it's, we think we can get close to 300 restaurants by 2030,
33:25by picking the right franchise partners.
33:28And that's not without it.
33:29That's not acquiring anything.
33:30That's just straight building.
33:33We think that's the, we think that we can get there pretty easily.
33:35There's a lot of white space for this, this pizza.
33:38Again, the world's 70% of, we joke around that fast, casual pizza is dead, right?
33:43And then we're running a fast, casual pizza place.
33:45But 70% of our customers pre-COVID were dine-in and now 70% of them are carry-out.
33:50So we believe we'll be the first to the table to make that to-go experience as good as that.
33:57And we have some things we're working on that I can't really talk about yet,
33:59but I think that'll make that experience at home feel like you're in the restaurant.
34:05If you get creative in ways, we do it.
34:06But I think between our social media and our whole revamp on our website and picking the
34:10right franchisees, and we're about to go into this new market that I think will fit us really well.
34:16Having me back home, we can talk about that.
34:18But I think there's different, we're excited about making that experience,
34:22the experience at home, not just in the restaurant.
34:24So before I let you go, I need to hear about your personal tech stack.
34:28So are you an Android or iPhone user?
34:31I'm an iPhone user.
34:33Which version?
34:34The newest one.
34:35The newest one.
34:35Whatever it is.
34:36I always get the newest.
34:37Do you prefer phone calls or text messages?
34:39Oh, text messages.
34:41Do you leave voicemails?
34:43No.
34:44How many emails do you get a day?
34:46A couple hundred.
34:47Which email provider do you use?
34:50Gmail.
34:51Gmail.
34:51Gee, sweet.
34:54How many group chats are you in?
34:56Oh, a thousand?
34:58I don't know.
34:58It's a lot.
34:59The guy, one of the friends of mine who worked with me for a while, he's got an Android.
35:05And he's like, we're in 327 group chats, just you and I, just the two of us.
35:09It tells you how many group chats you're in?
35:11I mean, Samsung does.
35:12Yeah, you can go on and look and it tells you how many, like, I'm in with this person,
35:16300 and something different.
35:18No way.
35:19Yeah, it's crazy.
35:19Are you kidding?
35:20It's nuts.
35:20Holy shit.
35:22How do you do internal communications?
35:25What, are you guys iMessage or are you Slack or what are you guys using?
35:29No, I refuse to use Gchat like I think our team does.
35:33I told them like, I have enough shit to do.
35:35I don't want to do it.
35:36I don't want to do it.
35:37I think our team does.
35:38I told them like, I have enough shit going on.
35:40Like, I'm not going to like, I got one.
35:42You got to call me, text me, email me.
35:43I'm not getting on that.
35:44We use Gchat internally, except for me, like I'll text.
35:47But we have monthly standups with the entire field.
35:50Everybody gets on the phone.
35:52I give them a five minute stay of the business.
35:53It's really for them to ask questions of what's coming down the pipeline, which is really fun.
35:59Yeah, but we're really big texters, big texters.
36:02Is that Google Meet or Zoom?
36:06It's Google Meet.
36:07I don't like, but it's what we got.
36:09It's better than Teams.
36:11Let's be honest.
36:11Yes.
36:12Better than Teams.
36:13Google Maps or Apple Maps?
36:15Google Maps.
36:16How do you listen to music?
36:19iTunes.
36:20iTunes.
36:20What's your notification strategy?
36:22Or iMusic, whatever, Apple Music.
36:25I don't have any sound on.
36:26It would be like a machine gun.
36:28So like, I just...
36:29But if we look at your phone right now, do you have notifications on apps?
36:33Yes.
36:33Or are you an inbox zero?
36:35No, no, no.
36:36I have notifications on apps.
36:37I try to keep my text messages clean because my OCD won't let me.
36:40But everything else, I have 4,000 unread emails, but zero unread texts.
36:45And you get 200 emails a day.
36:46How many of them do you enjoy reading?
36:50A dozen.
36:52If it's an email, it's usually serious.
36:54If somebody wants to tell me something great that just happened, they're going to text me.
36:57An email is usually more formal and it's either a report I have to read,
37:02or the board's asking me something that I don't want to respond to.
37:05But yeah.
37:06Well, I appreciate you for taking the time, Mike.
37:09It's been awesome.
37:09I can't wait to meet you in person.
37:11If you or anyone from Ann Pizza makes it out to San Diego, please let me know.
37:15And that goes for anybody in the audience.
37:17We've been doing this show.
37:18We appreciate Toast for sponsoring this.
37:20This is truly an honor for me to hear from the storytellers and CEOs that are building tomorrow
37:28what you guys do now and what you're going to continue to do in the future.
37:31I'm really excited that we were able to do this call.
37:34If you guys want to reach out to me, it's at Sean P. Walcheff.
37:36S-H-A-W-N-P-W-A-L-C-H-E-F.
37:40Instagram's the fastest, but I'm active on all platforms.
37:43I'm weirdly available.
37:44Mike, what's the best place for people to learn more about Ann Pizza franchising opportunities?
37:49Just go to our website.
37:51Yeah, at annpizza.com.
37:53And then our Instagram, it's all at annpizza.
37:56Sweet.
37:56And yeah.
37:58Thank you, man.
37:59I really appreciate it.
38:00If you guys need anything, stay curious, get involved, and don't be afraid to ask for help.
38:05We'll catch you guys next episode.
38:09Thank you for listening to Restaurant Influencers.
38:11If you want to get in touch with me, I am weirdly available at Sean P. Walcheff.
38:16S-H-A-W-N-P-W-A-L-C-H-E-F.
38:20Cali Barbecue Media has other shows.
38:23You can check out Digital Hospitality.
38:25We've been doing that show since 2017.
38:28We also just launched a show, Season 2, Family Style, on YouTube with Toast.
38:33And if you are a restaurant brand or a hospitality brand and you're looking to launch your own show,
38:39Cali Barbecue Media can help you.
38:41Recently, we just launched Room for Seconds with Greg Majewski.
38:46It is an incredible insight into leadership, into hospitality, into enterprise restaurants
38:53and franchise, franchisee relationships.
38:56Take a look at Room for Seconds.
38:58And if you're ready to start a show, reach out to us.
39:00Be the show dot media.
39:02We can't wait to work with you.