It may have cost a couple of hundred thousand marks, but the success was definitely worth it. For three days almost all of Hamburg was caught up in Joey's Pizza Fever. Joey's founder Carsten Gerlach and his local franchise partners (owners of 18 stores throughout Hamburg) decided to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Joey's Pizza Service by throwing a big party for the city of Hamburg.

Joey's Pizza service placed a special section inside the Hamburg Morning Post as an invitation to the party. The party lasted for three days and was a very big success. Customers were thankful, and there was much customer bonding. Sales doubled over the previous year and that helped to cover the costs. According to Gerlach, "At least just as important was getting together with our partners for a meeting and all kinds of fun. Who has worked hard ought also to be able to celebrate hard."

Joey's Pizza Service is revered as one of the leading success stories in European Food Service. Carsten Gerlach began with one store in April of 1988 and now has 90 in his organization with average sales of about $1,000,000 per store. They are in an aggressive growth period presently and have the plans and the people to have 180 units by the year 2,000. "The most important thing is the marketing, second is the performance, and third is the quality of the product. This may seem obvious, but it's true. And the more satisfied the franchise partner, the more successful is the system, "says Gerlach.

Most American pizza operators would agree that good marketing alone has never been able to overcome bad operations. Obviously, Joey's Pizza is doing a lot of things right.