By Charlie Pogacar
It’s an idea so simple, one has to wonder why it hasn’t happened yet, at least not at scale: a slice shop-style drive-thru franchise. Mark Goddard, co-founder and CEO of Slice Nation Pizza Co., believes he’s cracked the code. He has ambitions of scaling Slice Nation Pizza Co. to hundreds, if not thousands of locations in short order.
“I’ve had so many people who are in the industry go, ‘Why didn’t I see it?’” Goddard said.
There are other pizza-chain locations with drive-thru windows, but most of the time, it’s a channel confined to picking up takeout orders. McDonald’s memorably tried to serve pizza at its drive thrus, but was not able to do it at scale. And Goddard said he’s seen other concepts out there that offer slices in the drive-thru lane, but noted, “All of those use a heat lamp.” The difference with Slice Nation Pizza Co., Goddard said, is that everything is made from scratch and cooked to order.
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“To go get a pizza, I drive by three hamburger places, two chicken places and one taco place—all with drive thrus—but there’s no pizza place with a drive thru,” Goddard said. “Pizza is number two behind hamburgers—so why doesn’t a pizza drive-thru exist yet?”
When Goddard set out to create a pizza drive-thru concept that would rival the large burger chains, he knew that throughput would be the biggest challenge. He opted to tackle this by trying something unique, if not novel: Cooking each scratch-made slice individually in a slice-shaped pan rather than cooking whole pies and offering reheated slices. The R&D process—one that included input from famed pizzaiolo Anthony Falco—resulted in two different patents and a cook process that churns out slices in 1 minute and 40 seconds. The patents cover the pan that house the individual slices during the cooking process.
“The reason we can cook them so fast is due to the geometric shape,” Goddard said. “It’s less than 2” to center mass, which means it would need to be a 4” hockey puck to cook that fast if it were a circular pie.”
Goddard added another benefit to cooking slices to order rather than via the whole pie: According to him, the sauce, cheese and crust caramelize together during the cooking process, making it a more cohesive dining experience—ideal for those on the go.
To further enhance its throughput—and to solve potential bottlenecks at the drive-thru while maintaining a bare-bones staff inside of its locations—Slice Nation will employ voice-ordering AI. Each location will be equipped with a KDS system helping segment orders into digestible, easy-to-cook information accounting for each order. Goddard estimated a location will need, at peak times, no more than five team members to keep it churning out slices.
If Goddard can, in fact, pull off his vision, it will be a team effort. And Goddard has assembled quite the team, made up of folks who have years of experience helping scale some of the largest restaurant brands in the country. The team includes co-founder Bill Mathis, a 20-plus-year Subway franchisee. Mathis is well-known in the franchising community, having served as chair of the board for Subway franchisees.
Michelle Mathis—Bill’s wife—is currently a franchisee in the Caribou Coffee system. Based in St. Petersburg, Florida, Michelle brings an operations mind to Slice Nation. Finally, the brand’s chief development officer is Chris Fox, a man who spent five years as development director of Darden International (parent company to Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, and many others). Fox also has robust experience in the pizza franchising space, having spent 15 years scaling the international footprint of Villa Italian Kitchen.
“These are just really, really good people,” said Goddard. “They are people who, frankly, I feel lucky to be associated with.”
The team is bullish on Slice Nation’s model for a lot of reasons, including the fact that the brand’s official prototype is 700 square feet—a unit that could fit into most any space. Goddard envisions a world where he, and everyone else, can drive down the main drag of their town or city and have the option of drive-thru slices, right alongside the hamburger and chicken chains of the world.
When asked how big Goddard thinks Slice Nation can be, he couched his claim first: “I’m not crazy, OK?” he said. “I think I can get it to 1,000 stores in a reasonably short period of time. At that point, I’d turn it over to the next guy, who can take it from 1,000 to 5,000.”
“This is a really strong opportunity for those who want to get into the pizza space in a way that it’s never been done before,” Goddard continued. “We’ve already got so much interest that it’s not even funny.”