By Charlie Pogacar

Shahpour Nejad had spent eight years building up Pizza Guys when he finally decided to take it to the next step. It was the early 1990s, and the California concept had already proven itself, having grown to about a half-dozen stores since its launch in 1986. He knew Pizza Guys could keep right on growing, but it was running him ragged. So he did what many smart restaurateurs do when they reach this stage: He paid a lawyer a lot of money to help him franchise the brand. 

“The attorney is the person who listens to you and does what you tell them to do,” Nejad says. “For example, [creating] an operations manual, where you really get into the details of how a pizza is made. It’s very time-consuming and…as you know, attorneys cost a lot of money.”

Think of the above as steps 1, 2, and 3 of franchising your pizzeria. First, prove the concept. Second, call a lawyer. Third, be prepared to explain, in detail, all of your processes, from how to cook a pizza to how to clean the oven.

Related: Build it and believe it: What a thriving corporate culture should look like

Here’s a look at the franchising journeys of three established pizza brands and some of the wisdom their franchisors have acquired along the way. 

Shahpour Nejad, Pizza Guys
Headquarters: Sacramento, California

Some 30 years after establishing Pizza Guys as a franchise, Nejad is the CEO and owner of a 90-unit chain. To grow a brand, he says, the franchisees must be your top priority. “I always say that I am nobody unless these people who are running the stores are successful first. If they’re successful, I’ll become successful…so I make sure that all of my franchisees are happy.”

That means constant communication with and serving as a sounding board for franchisees, Nejad notes. Overall, franchisees want to feel fully supported by the master franchisor, although how the franchisor can provide that support will vary from brand to brand and from franchisee to franchisee—there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. 

Fortunately, Nejad’s philosophy makes finding franchisees that much easier. Word of mouth has spread, and he says entrepreneurs actively want to partner with the brand—in that way, the company has grown organically. But many of his original franchisees were former Pizza Guys managers. When Nejad first looked into franchising, he felt he could pull it off in part because he already had some dynamite store managers in place. They were so good that Nejad thought they would have little trouble pivoting to ownership.

So Nejad cut those store managers a deal: If they could find another great manager to run their store, he would finance a venture to build their own Pizza Guys location. This proved a prudent decision. “Most of those people are still with me,” Nejad says. “Maybe they even have two, three, four—up to seven stores—that they now own. In those early days, we did not spend a dime recruiting people to become franchisees.” 

So if you’re thinking about franchising, it might be worth asking: Do you already have an experienced store manager who wants to own a location, and would they be good at running it? If not, finding franchisees can prove costly—and, with your brand’s reputation now on the line, finding the wrong ones could be even costlier.

Related: How a pizzeria added over $250,000 in annual revenue via school lunch programs 

Michael Lamarca, Master Pizza
Headquarters: Cleveland, Ohio

Founded in Cleveland in the 1970s, Master Pizza grew quickly via franchising and apexed at as many as 38 locations. By the time Michael LaMarca’s family purchased the brand, however, Master Pizza had dwindled to just a single location. 

LaMarca and his kin had big plans to restore Master Pizza to its glory days of yore. That first required making the one surviving location successful and reestablishing Master Pizza’s reputation in the community, a process that took the better part of a decade.

Finally, in 2011, LaMarca took the next step toward recharging Master Pizza’s franchising growth: He opened a second location by himself. He thought of it as a soft launch of the company’s franchising business, an opportunity to work out some of the kinks prior to bringing that first franchisee on board. 

For anyone considering franchising, LaMarca recommends opening a new location with franchising in mind and nailing down your systems and processes, from recipes, portion controls and kitchen protocols—all in written form—to creating an operations manual and an employee handbook. He says launching that second Master Pizza location taught him a lot. “The biggest thing I learned is that it still takes time,” LaMarca says. “Just because you have a name out there and one successful store, you still need to put the time and effort into building that next store up—it’s not going to happen overnight. You can’t take success for granted, and you have to make that store work on its own.” 

That’s something LaMarca carries with him to this day, even now that Master Pizza has resurged to 15 locations and two different franchise partners. Every time a store opens, LaMarca and his team work just as hard to make sure it becomes its own self-sufficient entity. And they’ve succeeded: The newest Master Pizza location has become the brand’s most profitable store yet. 

Of course, that’s not always the case. “I thought my second store was going to be a million-dollar store right off the rip,” LaMarca says. “But it wasn’t. It was all new customers…who wanted a great product and a great customer-service experience. Now I can tell my franchisees, ‘Hey, look, don’t make that mistake. I’ve had this experience. This is what happened to me, and this is what it took to be successful.’” 

LaMarca offers one other piece of advice. In the early days of taking over Master Pizza, he didn’t own the rights to the name. He was free to use it under the terms of the purchase deal, but he couldn’t actually franchise with the brand name and logo. In other words, someone else could have opened a Master Pizza franchise, and he wouldn’t have had much of a claim to the name—at least not without spending tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees. 

“I would recommend that people learn about trademarking themselves,” LaMarca says. “Then go to the lawyer and say, ‘I want to trademark this, and this is what I need from you,’ rather than just, ‘I want to trademark this.’” In other words, a lawyer will charge a lot more to somebody who hasn’t conducted their own research. Doing your homework can save both money and valuable time.

Fran Garcia, Artichoke Basille’s Pizza
New York, New York

Fran Garcia, co-owner of New York’s celebrated Artichoke Basille’s Pizza, has grown his brand to 15 locations via franchising. Much like Nejad and LaMarca, Garcia has enjoyed the process of watching his franchisees grow into successful business owners. “When they’re successful, it changes their lives,” Garcia said. “They’re able to do things like buy [homes] and start families and be financially independent, and it’s very fulfilling to help them achieve their dream and be their own boss.” 

While Artichoke’s first franchising agreement was with an entrepreneur who brought the brand to New York’s two largest airports, Garcia later cut a deal with an employee who wanted to open locations where he’d grown up—in California’s Bay Area. “The only challenges were sourcing some of the products out there,” Garcia says. “Aside from that, if you have somebody who knows how to do it, what we do is not rocket science. So if you’re willing to work for it, it comes down to location, location, location. Anybody can be successful if they’re willing to work.” 

Garcia requires all of his prospective franchisees to undergo a fully immersive, month-long training program, doing everything from prepping ingredients and making pies to learning the register and POS system. Garcia said it’s a way of ensuring the franchisee actually has what it takes to manage the full day-to-day grind of owning a pizzeria. “Don’t get me wrong,” Garcia adds. “People who have never touched a frying pan can become very successful [franchisees]. But someone who is thinking about the business and wants to open one or two locations has to understand the sacrifice they are going to be making. If a guy doesn’t show up for work—it doesn’t matter if it’s a weekend, a holiday, a late-night shift—that means you have to be in the restaurant. Who is going to make dough that day? You have to know how to do it, and you have to be willing to do it.”

The Pizza Power Forum: Power Players

Michael LaMarca of Master Pizza and Shahpour Nejad of Pizza Guys will be featured panel speakers at PMQ’s Pizza Power Forum, taking place September 4 and 5 in Atlanta. Here’s a look at the topic they’ll address:

Scaling With Integrity: How to Maintain Your Brand’s Standards During Growth