By Charlie Pogacar
Mike Burns, CEO of &pizza, likes to say his goals out loud. Not because he believes you can manifest your future, but because being held accountable tends to produce results.
“We think (250-300 stores in five years) is not easily attainable, but we feel it is attainable,” Burns said on the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast. “We also feel like you have to vocalize that target. Like, if I want to lose weight, I might not lose weight. But if I tell a bunch of people, ‘Hey, I’m going on a diet today,’ now I might have more motivation to do it.”
This psychology appears to be working—Burns has &pizza moving in the right direction. The brand recently inked four different franchise deals, each one a three-location deal. New franchisees will operate in Orlando, Atlanta, Charleston and Raleigh. For &pizza, which announced in March plans to begin franchising, these new franchising agreements are critical and will be treated as such.
Related: 350 Locations by 2030: After Recapturing Its Edgy Vibe, &pizza Set to Begin Franchising
“You’re not going to get any future funding or investments if [these first franchised restaurants] are duds, right?” Burns said. “So you have to be really specific on the locations that you’re opening at first…and once you hit those first four-or-five restaurants, you really start to build momentum.”
If the plan sounds like something out of a coach’s playbook, that’s no coincidence. Burns played multiple sports at Emerson College in Boston and became the women’s head basketball coach at his alma mater by age 23. He later became an assistant coach at an NCAA Division II program in North Carolina where he began working as a Dunkin’ Donuts manager on the side. He brought the lessons he learned as a coach with him to the restaurant industry—lessons that helped him when he started at &pizza two years ago and found a stagnant brand in need of some key tweaks.
“Everybody has their role, everybody has the position they have to play,” Burns said of the similarities between a sports team and a roster of restaurant executives. “[When I began at &pizza], there were too many voices. We had to streamline that and make it one singular voice that cascades down [to the rest of the team].”
To hear more about Burns’s background and &pizza’s franchising strategy, listen to the latest episode of the podcast:
