By Charlie Pogacar
In 1976, Wayne Ulrey purchased a small pizzeria in West Jefferson, Ohio, for $19,000. The seller secretly plotted to buy the pizza shop back once the Ulreys had inevitably failed due to a lack of restaurant experience. Nearly 50 years later, Flyers Pizza & Subs has grown to 10 locations and will log nearly $21 million in systemwide sales this year.
Yes, the Ulreys proved everyone wrong. But Wayne’s youngest son, Scott—who serves as co-president of Flyers alongside Doug May—said the anniversary is one his team doesn’t take for granted.
“It means everything to us,” Ulrey told PMQ Pizza. “It means all that hard work did not go in vain.”
Related: Inside a 10-Unit Pizza Chain’s ESOP—and Why It Works
Earlier this year, that legacy was formally recognized when the Ulrey family was inducted into the Ohio Restaurant & Hospitality Alliance Hall of Fame for its lasting impact on Ohio’s foodservice industry and nearly five decades of leadership at Flyers Pizza & Subs. Longevity is a core part of Flyers’ story on paper: a humble pizza brand that grew deliberately, store by store, without getting ahead of itself.
“Whether you think that’s a small business or a large business,” May said. “We still operate like a small business.”
A Recession Decision
Ask Ulrey what it takes to last for decades in the pizza business, and he doesn’t start with marketing or menu innovation. Instead he cites a moment, the outset of the Great Recession, where a critical decision had to be made. With markets crashing and consumers already feeling the pinch, Ulrey met with his father and brothers to discuss their strategy moving forward. Would they try to match pizza chains with heavy discounts? Or would they stand their ground and hope for the best?
“The direction we took is we were never gonna compromise the quality of our product,” Ulrey said. “We always look for the best product that we can put out there—and that wasn’t going to change.”
Instead, Flyers focused on a different definition of value. “The customer can spend their $20 anywhere,” Ulrey said. “And we wanted to make sure that when they spent their $20 at our place, they were going to leave satisfied. We’re [targeting] families out there who can get a pizza and feed their family.”
The decision wasn’t painless. Ulrey said the company had to “dig out” of that era. But the payoff eventually came: Flyers posted some of its strongest years shortly after the recession, validating the belief that consistency and quality could still win in a crowded pizza market.
Fostering Culture Via Growth
Like many pizzerias, Flyers is often a first job for teenagers. But unlike many brands, it plans for what happens if those employees stay, or come back after college.
“Some of these kids come in and you watch them push a broom on the floor—they don’t even know how to do it,” Ulrey said. “You have to grab the broom and say, ‘This is how you do it.’”
The point, he added, isn’t perfection on day one. It’s ensuring team members progress and develop into solid contributors. That internal pipeline has fueled Flyers’ expansion, giving the brand a deeper bench of people to train as managers. When new stores open, they’re rarely run by outsiders.
“When we go to open up a new store, we’re not generally putting a new manager in there that hasn’t already learned the Flyers’ culture,” Ulrey said. “We’re putting a manager in there that’s worked for us for a long time.”
Flyers reinforces team member development through structured training, including an eight-week onboarding program that covers station work, opening and closing procedures and supervised independence. The goal is consistency—not just between shifts, but across locations.
As May sees it, protecting that consistency requires staying unusually close to the business. “The term micromanaging might have a negative connotation,” he said. “And maybe we don’t micromanage our people, but we micromanage the business.”
For the Flyers’ leadership team, that philosophy shows up physically every week. Through what the company calls its “helping hands” program, executives—including Ulrey and May—work in stores during peak periods, cutting pizzas alongside frontline employees.
“That allows us to see what’s going on in our stores, hear what’s going on in our stores,” May said. “And it shows our employees that we’re not above cutting pizzas or making pizzas either.”
The Menu’s Magic Touch
The menu at Flyers Pizza & Subs reflects the same philosophy that has guided its growth: do the fundamentals well, execute them consistently and don’t be afraid to try new things. At the center of that approach is the thin-crust, square-cut pizza itself, anchored by a sauce recipe that dates back to the company’s foundation. “We hear it all the time about our sauce,” May said, noting that it’s one of the most common pieces of feedback the brand receives.
The Flyers’ dough program has evolved in recent years. As it continued to add locations, dough making and storage became a clear pain point. The brand found a solution in a commissary kitchen that produces all of its pizza crusts. The move has allowed the company to maintain quality and consistency without burdening its teams with an all-day production process.
“We want to be consistent from store one to store ten,” Ulrey said. “When someone goes into store number one and gets a Bomber, then goes to another location and orders it again, we want it to be the same pizza.”
While Flyers does the basics well, it also leans into variety and customization. In addition to pizza, the menu includes subs, salads and a full range of appetizers, and customers can customize orders freely—half-and-half pizzas included. The brand takes particular pride in its house-made sausage, another recipe that dates back decades.
The creativity in the menu is highlighted by its fully loaded Bomber pizza—provolone, pepperoni, a house blend of sausage, ham, salami, onion, mushroom and green peppers—and more unconventional creations like the pickle-topped “Spicy Chicken Dilluxe,” which recently won a local pizza competition. “We take pride in our specialty pizzas,” Ulrey said. “And we don’t skimp on our toppings.”
Giving Back, the Flyers Way
For Flyers, community involvement isn’t treated as a marketing tactic—it’s part of how the company defines its role in the neighborhoods it serves. That mindset shapes how Flyers approaches everything from local fundraisers to long-term charitable partnerships.
The company’s largest organized effort centers on Autism Speaks, a cause Ulrey described as “near and dear to our company’s heart.” Flyers supports the organization through multiple annual initiatives, including in-store roundup campaigns and seasonal promotions.
“For a limited time, we sell heart-shaped pizzas, and we donate [$2.50] from each of those pizzas to Autism Speaks,” May said. Beyond fundraising, Flyers’ leadership team and employees also volunteer their time, regularly working shifts at organizations like the Mid-Ohio Food Collective. “It’s not just supporting organizations like that [through donations],” May said. “We’ll go out once a month or once every two months and work a half day.”
That commitment extends to smaller, everyday requests that are common in close-knit communities. Flyers frequently supports local schools, youth sports teams and community events—sometimes on a large scale, sometimes one request at a time.
“We really try to ingrain ourselves in the suburbs and communities that we do business in,” Ulrey said. “It’s a win-win situation—we’ll support your team, they come down and sit in our restaurant and the parents are all having a good time eating our pizza.”
The ESOP Difference
In 2016, Flyers took another step that would shape its future: transitioning to an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), a move still rare in the restaurant industry. Ulrey describes the decision as a solution to two problems at once: succession planning and employee retention.
“As the brothers got older, we needed a plan for the company to continue after they retired,” he said. “But we also wanted to make sure the cash flow in the company stayed active, so we could continue to grow and make the proper improvements.”
Somebody tipped Ulrey off to the ESOP model—something he hadn’t previously heard of. It immediately resonated with him. It sounded like exactly what the Ulreys was looking for.
Under Flyers’ ESOP, employees who are at least 21 years old and work 1,000 hours per year earn shares in the company—regardless of role.“You can be a delivery driver, a pizza maker, or a manager,” Ulrey said. “You receive shares in the company based on your salary at the end of each year.”
For long-tenured employees, it’s a gamechanger. Whereas many pizzerias might throw a party and thank longtime employees for their service, the ESOP supplies a sometimes sizable check for their contributions to the company.
May said the ESOP has become a meaningful differentiator when recruiting experienced managers. At the very least, “it gives us something else to talk about,” May said. “We can say here’s why you should come work here instead of the other pizza place.”
The ESOP is a reflection of the values that have guided Flyers toward its 50th anniversary. While it may have begun with a $19,000 gamble by Wayne Ulrey, Flyers has grown via treating team members and customers well.
“We’re in the people business,” Scott Ulrey said. “We just happen to be selling pizzas.”
