By Charlie Pogacar
When Rosanna and Giovanni Taccardi opened the first Crust N Fire location in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, they expected to spend months building brand awareness. They’d spent a combined 30 years in the restaurant business and were familiar with how opening a restaurant usually works. Instead, customers embraced the concept from the beginning.
“Usually when you open a restaurant you have to promote it—send out menus, get magazines involved, all sorts of PR,” Rosanna told PMQ Pizza. “For us, we never even had to do that. It was an immediate response from the public. They just loved us from the get-go.”
That early traction became the engine behind a fast-casual brand that grew steadily to five units clustered tightly within Burlington and Camden counties, all just miles apart. Today, the duo oversees more than 150 employees while launching what they hope will be the next phase of growth: franchising.
Related: Inside Tony Gemignani’s Dive Into the World of Pizzeria Franchising
For the Taccardis, moving to a franchising model wasn’t about chasing national attention. It was a decision born of necessity—to restore work-life balance and the long-term sustainability of the brand.
Pizza Biz in the Blood
Rosanna and Giovanni Taccardi have been building on the legacy of Rosanna’s father, who once operated more than a dozen Tony Sopranos Pizza restaurants before passing away in 2012. After some time exploring other concepts, the couple launched Crust N Fire in 2017 with a different vision: A health-forward fast casual built not just on specialty pizzas, but also burgers, bowls and smoothies.
Locals flocked to the initial locations, which made the couple confident in expanding. One store turned into two, and soon, Crust N Fire had five locations.
Operationally, the brand functions like a much larger organization: consistent menu innovation, heavy catering volumes, multi-unit staffing and quality control across multiple dayparts. But the leadership team has remained the same size it was on day one. Whereas the world of franchising can seem intimidating to some, it sounds like relief to the Taccardis.
“Believe it or not, I don’t think it’s going to be harder for us,” Taccardi said. “It’s actually going to be easier. If we have a franchisee involved, it’s an owner. They’re gonna love the brand and expand it just like we do here in New Jersey.”
Trial by Reinvention
Born in Italy, Rosanna Taccardi immigrated with her family in the early 1990s and grew up inside the restaurant business. She left the industry to pursue nursing—“I loved helping people,” she said—but later found herself pulled back into the restaurant business.
Giovanni Taccardi, a chemical engineer by training, followed a similar arc. After the couple married in Italy in 2005, he moved to the U.S., joined Rosanna’s family business, and “absolutely fell in love” with restaurants.
“He said, ‘I would never go back to [chemical engineering],” Rosanna recalled.
“This is a gift for me.’”
Their unconventional backgrounds are part of what enabled Crust N Fire’s unique position. Rosanna brings with her a customer-first mentality, while Giovanni’s attention to detail—that engineering mind—form a potent combination. Add in three decades of restaurant experience, and the result you get is on a brand on the verge of massive growth.
Regional Domination
Prior to franchising, the Taccardis focused on dominating one region. All five Crust N Fire locations sit within about a 5–6 mile radius.
For many operators, opening stores in such close proximity feels counterintuitive—why divide your target demographic? But Crust N Fire isn’t a typical pizzeria. The brand’s menu is built for multiple dayparts, and much of its growth has come from catering, especially to medical offices and pharmaceutical reps in the region.
“There are so many medical offices here in South Jersey and Philadelphia,” Taccardi said. “We do about 10 to 12 [catering] orders a day across the five locations. Lunch is high volume.” In fact, their sales mix is about 50% lunch, 50% dinner, Taccardi estimated.
Clustering allowed the brand to consolidate labor pools, simplify oversight and build regional awareness by word of mouth. By the time they reached five stores, Crust N Fire had become a South Jersey fixture. That’s the model they want franchisees to replicate—not necessarily tight clustering, but intentional regional momentum before stretching into far-flung territory.
Built On Passion, Not Experience
Some franchise systems favor operators with deep pockets and storied restaurant backgrounds. Crust N Fire takes a different approach.
“You don’t have to be an entrepreneur,” Taccardi said. “You don’t have to have a ton of years of experience in the food business. Anybody who is willing to train with us will be able to run a Crust N Fire smoothly.”
To protect quality, the Taccardis designed an FDD that limits product freedom but maximizes operational consistency. For example, franchisees must use Crust N Fire’s proprietary burger blend, their mandated vendors (U.S. Foods and Ferraro Foods) and their established recipes. After signing, operators will spend two to three weeks in New Jersey learning both front- and back-of-house operations.
“Everything has to be our product, our blend and our vendors,” Taccardi said. “We’re very big on that.”
Up Next
It has only been a couple of weeks since Crust N Fire officially launched as a franchise, and the brand has already fielded its first serious inquiry. The franchising agency they’re partnering with is now fielding leads, running background checks and coordinating discovery visits.
Rosanna says she isn’t nervous about scaling or about maintaining quality. She says the brand is focused on finding the right operators: owners who want to grow something, not just run it. Owners with the same fire she and Giovanni have built into the brand name itself.
“If you expect to make money from this, you need to grow,” she said. “You need to love the brand. Expand it just like we do here.”
Charlie Pogacar is PMQ’s senior editor.
