By Alexandra Mortati | Photos courtesy of Manizza’s Pizza
Coming from the fitness industry, Christina Martin, owner of Manizza’s Pizza in Las Vegas, never saw pizza in her future. “I was a personal trainer and ran a few gyms,” she said. “When I had my daughter, I started prepping healthy meals at home and turned it into a business. After three years of owning my meal prep company, I opened a pizza business for fun. It was 10% of the revenue but had 100% of my heart.”
Martin had been leasing a large space for her company, Diced Kitchen. “I was looking to sublease the space to offset some of the costs. My manager had run a Domino’s, and my stepdad is a pizza nerd, so I thought, ‘How hard can pizza be? It’s awesome!’ I had the idea in January or February of 2019 and opened the pizzeria in May. It was a quick research and development [process], but I already had people onboard who knew how to do it. I made my first pizza less than two weeks before we opened.”
Operating a pizzeria out of a market had its challenges, so Martin got creative. “We just had a market for the meal prep business, so all the pizza was carryout or delivery. I had a big network in the Henderson area, so I wrote to all of my meal prep customers and training clients and said, ‘I’m opening a pizzeria, come do a tasting.’ Two hundred people showed up. We took a ton of photos and posted to social media to build awareness and, ultimately, we grew by word of mouth.”
“Originally, I was just going to open the pizzeria from 4 to 9 p.m. so that there wouldn’t be overlap with the meal prep company operations,” she recalls. “But I knew we were competing for business, and I’m an ‘open 7 days a week’ kind of gal. We’d be batch-cooking and plating for the meal prep company with pizza boxes everywhere. It was really chaotic but only nuts around lunch. I had plenty of team members, so I was directing traffic. It was not even a year after we opened that COVID-19 happened, so I really got into the role of playing maestro and air traffic control. I had a few tiny breakdowns for sure, but that was a matter of getting a pizza oven in there. We had been using a tiny four-deck Bakers’ Pride that was not much larger than a microwave. We pushed it to its absolute capacity. Now, we have a big, beautiful Marsal [oven]. I can do some damage on that thing.”
To overcome some of the challenges she faced, Martin turned to marketing. “We geared our marketing towards families and dinner. Marketing was never my area of expertise, but I found that direct mail worked really well. We didn’t have any street visibility and, when you walked in, it [didn’t look like] a pizzeria. It was a market to buy healthy meals. A lot of our direct mails said, ‘Come get a free personal pizza,’ and it was no strings attached. We still do that from time to time.”
Running two businesses and raising a child is a lot for anyone, and Martin started to feel the heat. “I saw the rate of growth that pizza was giving. Having a small daughter, my meal prep company was eating me alive. Having a big ego at 27, I wanted to be involved in everything. I missed so much of her toddler years because I was just grinding. I saw that, with pizza, I could delegate and get my life back. It became clear that I needed to close the meal prep business or sell it. I made a great deal with some friends of mine who were doing meal prep on a smaller scale and stayed on with them informally for a year-and-a-half to bridge the gap. Once we sold the meal prep out of there, the location was not where I wanted to be for pizza. It was fine as a hub for delivery, but with pizza we needed visibility and traffic.”
Martin gave her entire team a paid month off so they wouldn’t go find new jobs while construction for her new Manizza’s location wrapped up. “To me, opening with a brand-new staff was going to be a nightmare. I bribed them all to go to the new store and opened with seasoned workers. We had money because I had just sold the meal prep company, so I had plenty of cash to open the new store and keep people.”
Social Media and Direct Mail
Martin’s new store wasn’t very close to her old store, meaning she had to turn to marketing once again to bring in new customers. “I wasn’t banking on all of my old customers following,” she said. “[Using social media], we posted a lot of our build-out, which took forever during COVID-19. Don’t sign a lease in September 2020! I signed on to the building eight months before opening. It was expensive and terrible. We did a big social media push where we offered free pizza for a year to the first 100 people in line on opening day. It meant potentially giving away about 1,200 pizzas because we limited it to one pizza a month. But in reality, we gave away about 500-600, and those people now have a habit with us every month. It was wild to see. We had people sleeping in the parking lot and lines wrapping around the block and the building. To see people camping in cars was unreal. We really hyped it up.”
“I’m so loyal to my favorite restaurants, so I talk to my guests [on social media] as if I’m talking to myself. We’re family-oriented, like a wholesome mom-and-pop Chick-fil-A of pizza.”
Aside from big social media pushes, Martin continues to do a lot of direct mail. “We use a company called Our Town and send mailers to new movers when new people move into the area. We also send out half birthday coupons instead of birthday ones since people get inundated on their birthday. People end up ordering extra stuff and making it a celebration they weren’t planning. It’s fun and quirky and a unique way to get their attention. We make it really colorful. It’s been such a success we are probably going to ditch our new movers’ coupons and move entirely to half birthdays.”
Building a Strong Team
Pizza is more than a food business; it’s a people business—and Martin gets that. “I love the people. I love the business, and I love the pizza. I’m all about the craft and the skill, the baking and the science, but the people side is what I’m naturally really good at. During COVID-19, we weren’t open every day because we did two huge batches and two huge deliveries a day with the meal prep company. I loved being closed on Mondays because I was working so hard and getting my ass kicked, but, ultimately, if you have the resources to be open seven days a week, it is my opinion that you should be. I would hate for a customer to show up and we’re not open so then they go and eat trash pizza somewhere else.”
Martin is fiercely loyal to her staff as well as to her customers. “This is nothing without our customers. It wouldn’t exist. And I will always be the last to eat and the last to pay myself. I will not pay my mortgage before I skip payroll. For some, it’s their first job, so I have to be the best example, so that when they go to the real world, they bring value. I have to lead by example. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it.”
Creating a strong team is a core focus for Martin. “Our positions are based on skill, not on tenure, except for leadership and management where there’s more subjectivity. I have a library in the lobby with my personal books. Some are about personal development, and others are business biographies. To be promoted, you have to finish two books and write book reports. My mentor is Mike Bausch, and I want to encourage them to read his book, so that one is a two-for-one special. You can read Unsliced instead of having to read two books.”
Martin also makes sure to celebrate her team. “Our promotions are really fun. They are very ceremonial. I try to make it fun and engaging. We have a really positive kitchen environment.”
To foster continued learning, Christina keeps track of other qualifiers. “I have a huge checklist of things they are learning as part of their onboarding,” she noted. “If they screw up the sauce, I can know who taught them how to make it and when. If they are really good on the register but struggling with a calzone, we can identify it and help them prioritize. I’m big on checklists, but they must be worthwhile and important. Everyone learns by osmosis, and I have really good leadership. The team members who come in and ask for the library are the ones I invest in quickly. I’m passionate about my pizza, but I’m more passionate about my people.”
Having a strong team doesn’t mean that issues never arise. “It’s not daisies all the time,” Martin admits. “I’ve given one formal written write-up and warning in eight years. I’m honest with people and tell them that in their interview. This is my second home, so it’s a big deal for me. I hire for personality more than I hire for experience. For management, I need to know that you have my vision and can do it in a way that I would. I try to make everything as cut-and-dry as humanly possible for my employees so they can use their personalities. When [they’re not] using their brain space guessing anything, they are way happier at work, and they are way more confident. Rarely do I have to tell them that they dropped the ball. I have to make sure they would do things the way I would do them or as if I was standing there watching them. Hire people pleasers!”
Speaking of people pleasers, Martin and her team do everything they can to give their customers the absolute best experience possible. “We have an app called Ovation that every restaurant needs. Every time someone plugs in an order, it collects their phone number and, 30 minutes after their food is delivered, it gives them a range of emojis to select. It seamlessly integrates with Toast and other POS and allows us to text with the customer in real time. I get a lot of reviews, and the heart-eyes emoji equates to a 5-star review and takes them to Yelp and Google reviews.”
‘Make Your Problems Boring’
In addition to Ovation, Martin said, “I use a lot of technology so I can be everywhere. I love Ovation. I love Toast. I love Our Town, and I use Amazon Alexa. I have three Alexas in my kitchen. One does music, one does the fryers, one does the ovens. She is like an assistant and a timer. My pizza burn rate is like 1 in 150. What I found is that, in addition to my camera systems, I can also call in and be like, ‘Hey, can you fold some pizza boxes?’ I can also set reminders. The fifth thing I love is Sensor Push. I have Bluetooth thermometers in all our refrigerators. Instead of taking temp checks every hour, it’s automatic, and the health department loves it because I can pull my time and temp logs any time of day on any day. It can send me push notifications if anything goes out of range so I know about it before it’s a crisis and we can course-correct.”
Martin approaches problem-solving proactively instead of reactively. “Make your problems boring,” she said. “Because I do that, I can be reactive to things I can’t control. I do that with my whole life. I don’t buy just one lightbulb for my reptile tank; I buy a few because the light will go out again.”
Leaning on resources is a key to success, and Martin will be the first to tell you that. “Find a mentor. You don’t have to create everything on your own. I did that with Diced Kitchen. I had to invent the wheel. With pizza, it’s been done, and it’s been done successfully. If you can, attach yourself to someone willing to educate you and be a fun person to educate. Smarter people have already found a way to do a lot of this really successfully so find these people.”
Martin recalls the first time she saw Mike Bausch speak at Pizza Expo. “I was, like, ‘He is going to be my friend.’ It took two years, but now we speak every day. Check the ego unless you want to work all day every day and be exhausted and maybe do a B+ job. I have team members who are artists who design my pizza boxes. I have an opps guy who is observant. My business partner is a finance geek and can guide my decisions when I’m feeling spicy. The key is finding people who are smarter and better than you, but people are afraid to do that because they want to be needed for everything.”
Nothing But a Blessing
Being a woman in the pizza industry hasn’t been a big problem for Martin. “I’ve only had two scenarios where I was talked down to and they wanted to talk to my husband. Maybe this is specific to pizza, but it’s such a friendly community. People seem to really resonate with me because I’m a mom, a wife, a business owner, and I want to travel and have hobbies. I want to work but not work myself to death. It really hasn’t been anything but a blessing. There have been a few times where employees have gone a little cuckoo on me when they are no longer employees, and I let my husband handle that because they are bigger than me. My advice is to know just enough to be dangerous. Ask a few questions and make them think twice when they question you or try to take advantage of you. With contractors, I get multiple quotes and pick up on keywords they say to make them think I know a little more than I actually do.”
So where did the “Manizza” name come from? It’s a name in Martin’s family, and it’s been a huge success for her thus far. “The first pizzeria in the meal prep space was named Stella for my daughter,” she noted. “But there are a handful of Stella’s Pizzas across the country, and it was already trademarked. Since I’m related to all of the Manizzas, it was an easy decision to rebrand.”
“I want to continue to grow this and give people opportunities to have great careers,” she continued. “Turning this into a multi-unit is ideal, but I want to do it really, really right. I want my manager and I to be able to take two weeks off and know it will be OK and [the team] can handle whatever happens. I want to grow within it. I want to focus my time and efforts on my slices of pie—hobbies, interests, family, financial growth. Time freedom is numero uno. My time is not always at the shop, but my brain is always on the shop, and I need to work on that. Nothing is better than getting a 5-star review when I didn’t handle a single thing. Nothing is better than having good processes in place.”
Martin is meticulous, nurturing, insightful and bold. She empowers her team to be the best they can be. She holds herself and others accountable. She is engaging and fun. She leads by example. Next time you’re in Las Vegas, stop by Manizza’s to grab a slice and talk about all things business, coaching and pizza with her!
Alexandra Mortati is the marketing director for Orlando Foods and founder of Women In Pizza, a not-for-profit organization that empowers women in the pizza industry to share their stories, display their talents, inspire innovations, and connect with one another and the world. This article originally appeared on the Instagram account for Women In Pizza. Click here to learn more about the organization.
