By Callie Evergreen
Mellow Mushroom may be 50 years old, but the iconic, 160-plus-location pizza chain is charging into its next era with a strategic vision for the future.
Ahsan Jiva, EVP of strategy and transformation at Mellow Mushroom, joined the brand just before the pandemic and has since helped overhaul everything from store design to tech infrastructure. Here’s a Q&A with Jiva originally published by PMQ Pizza’s sister publication, FSR magazine that dives into digital transformation and why “thinking like a CFO” is critical in today’s restaurant landscape.
FSR: What first drew you to Mellow Mushroom?
Jiva: I didn’t come from a hospitality background, so a lot of it was new—but it was exciting because of the untapped potential within the restaurant industry. I was always passionate about restaurants, and I come from a family of really good cooks. I had the Holy Shiitake pizza and thought, ‘Holy shiitake, this is good.’
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I had experienced Mellow Mushroom growing up in the Southeast—I went to Auburn University and we have a Mellow there—and when I had conversations with folks about where Mellow was headed from a digital transformation standpoint, I saw a great opportunity to bring in what I’d learned from other industries.
FSR: What led to Mellow Mushroom’s brand refresh?
Jiva: We were always what I call a ‘snowflake brand,’ where we built locations individually and unique to the environment that they were in. And that was great—that got us to where we are today.
But with rising costs and the attention span of our culture and society today, we needed a way to make sure people recognized our brand instantly, but also that we kept our brand counterculture, breaking the rules and embracing individuality, but bringing it into the modern world.
FSR: How did you get franchisees aligned around the new brand identity?
Jiva: We let the data do the work for us. We spent a lot of time, effort, energy, and resources doing store design research, guest intercepts, focus groups. We got some pushback saying, ‘I’ve had this signage for 15 years—people know me.’ But the person that’s never been to your restaurant that may have gone to a Mellow Mushroom in a different location will never know you’re there because they can’t recognize that you’re under the same umbrella of Mellow Mushroom. And when we showed the awareness opportunity and guest feedback, it really illuminated for our franchisees that it was time to evolve.
FSR: What’s your biggest learning from the restaurant industry so far?
Jiva: Think like a CFO. If you don’t have the ultimate goal of improving the financial performance of the restaurants, I think you’re thinking about it the wrong way. I used to be in digital marketing, and agencies would say, ‘Look, we have 20 million impressions and 50,000 clicks.’ That’s great. But my P&L shows that I didn’t drive a nickel more in sales. In the restaurant industry where margins are getting thinner every day, you can’t just continue to operate in silos—everyone has to think like a CFO.
Callie Evergreen is the editor of FSR magazine, sister publication to PMQ Pizza.
