By Charlie Pogacar
Square Pie Guys, the Bay Area’s beloved Detroit-style pizza brand that recently celebrated its 5th anniversary, has three brick-and-mortar locations. As co-founder and CEO Marc Schechter told PMQ on the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast, the brand aspired to double its brick-and-mortar locations this year but ran into some hiccups.
That’s not to say the business hasn’t grown of late. Square Pie Guys has a unique satellite kitchen model that has helped the brand enter 10 other markets around the Bay Area.
“We know we have a really strong brand,” Schechter said on the podcast. “We get all sorts of emails and DMs and other qualitative feedback from guests being like, ‘Hey, open up in San Jose! Open up in Lafayette! Open up in Mill Valley!’ But it would be tough to [set up a full store] in those markets quickly.”
Related: Behind the Scenes at Square Pie Guys, The Little Brand With a Big-Time Innovation Process
Meanwhile, Schechter and his team were approached by the team at Local Kitchens, who offered to help scale Square Pie Guys in a different way. The idea: setting up limited-menu versions of the brand in strategically located micro food halls. They would pay for a license to replicate the food, and Square Pie Guys would provide key ingredients via a centralized kitchen in order to maintain quality and consistency.
Before agreeing to the deal, Schechter worked carefully with a lawyer to ensure the arrangement would help grow the business in a positive way. That involved routine secret shopping of each location to ensure it was doing things correctly.
“We created kind of like a grading rubric for the restaurant experience or the takeout experience,” Schechter said. “[Secret shoppers] go there and come up with a score. We’ve agreed with local kitchens on what that score needs to be.”
Overall, the model has helped Square Pie Guys get its pizza in the mouths of more customers. It’s helped spread brand awareness and grow revenue, with hopes that the revenue will ultimately help Square Pie Guys scale its brick-and-mortar locations, too.
But the Local Kitchens model hasn’t been without some growing pains, some of which are still being fleshed out by Schechter and the licensees. For example, the fact that each satellite location has a limited menu can lead to marketing challenges.
“It’s always odd,” Schechter said, “when our three locations are running a promotion or discount or have an event, and then people in those regions [with] the licensed stores are like, ‘Is it happening here?’ And we’re like, ‘No, not necessarily.’ It’s like this whole [challenge of] getting aligned on the brand messaging and what it is.”
For more on the Square Pie Guys’ story, check out the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Podcast.
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