By Charlie Pogacar
Bill Vivian thinks of his late friend and business partner, Chef Stephen Carson, at least once per day. Though Carson passed away from cancer in 2011, the pizzeria he founded—Regents Pizzeria in La Jolla, California—lives on as one of the highest-grossing pizza restaurants in the country. Vivian sees Carson’s fingerprints on every aspect of the business and aspires to carry on the vision Carson had when he bought the business 20 years ago.
Vivian, a restaurant turnaround specialist, became a partner in Regents Pizzeria in 2008, about three years after Carson had purchased it. In 2005, Regents was a 1,100-square-foot shop doing approximately $450,000 in annual sales, he said. Carson, an experienced chef, put into motion a massive turnaround by focusing on making high-quality pizza and delivering exceptional customer service. In 2025, Regents now occupies a 4,100-square-foot space and will record $7.5 million in sales.
And while much of the shop’s success is owed to Vivian’s considerable acumen as a restaurant operator—as well as his experienced managers and team members—the concept would not exist without Carson. “He’s with us every day,” Vivian said. “His stock-in-trade was food quality and innovative recipes. We maintain the spirit of that in everything we do.”
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Ultimate Hospitality
According to Slice, the average top-quartile independent pizzeria records $658,548 in annual sales. How is a 4,100-square-foot pizzeria outpacing even the highest-performing pizzerias by 11x? Ask Vivian what turned a struggling shop into a single-unit powerhouse, and he doesn’t hesitate. “Quality, hospitality and consistency,” he said. “It’s that simple.”
Simple, however, does not mean easy. “Any good operator is going to tell you the secret to their success is great food, great hospitality,” he said. “But what you’ll find is that a relatively small percentage actually do that, particularly when push comes to shove—commodity prices go up, labor costs go up. The temptation is to cut corners. We would never do that.”
Vivian describes Carson as a supertaster with a brilliant culinary mind. “He was a very, very talented guy with a remarkable palate,” Vivian said. “I used to tease him about being a supertaster, but it was what made him such a talented chef.” Carson applied his superpowers to the menu, dreaming up a concept that served amazing New York-style rounds and Chicago deep-dish pizza.
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The pizzeria has also always focused on a next-level craft beer program, complete with 32 rotating taps from the prodigious number of microbreweries in the San Diego area. Every bartender at Regents is Cicerone-trained and has a goal of helping a customer find the beer they want to be drinking within three taste tests. Tap-lines are acid-washed weekly, something Regents learned from longtime partner and microbrew trailblazer Stone Brewing Co. Vivian also credits an ace in the hole, co-creator and co-owner Cary Reutter, for possessing a keen eye for craft beer and for building relationships with local brewers and suppliers. The result is a beer menu that generates over $1 million in annual sales.
“When this was starting out, I asked myself, ‘Who needs another pizza and beer joint in San Diego?’” Vivian admitted. “And I realized nobody did—unless we become the best. And I believe we have. We have zero commodity beers and will never [feature one]. When a tap is kicked, we replace it with the same style beer from a different brewery.”
A Culture of More
With Carson’s commitment to quality and the craft of pizza and beer in mind, Regents has doubled down as food costs have skyrocketed. The pizzeria hasn’t been afraid to raise its menu prices—perhaps partially because La Jolla is a wealthy enclave of Southern California. That’s not a knock: It illustrates that Carson and Vivian have always been in touch with the customer base Regents serves.
“We’ve always had pricing power,” Vivian said. “We use premium ingredients—the best you can buy domestically—and always will.”
The strategy has worked. The restaurant grew “solely on word of mouth,” eventually outgrowing the tiny original space and relocating to its current high-volume, high-efficiency operation. Today, Vivian says guests most often ask him the same two questions: How is the food so consistently good across categories, and where does he find the fine people who work there? The answers to both are intertwined, and it begins with the team culture surrounding Regents Pizzeria.
Vivian detailed the shop’s hiring process, which is led by two managers—the only people with hiring power in the whole operation. There’s a four-page screening process including a portion that is scored. If an applicant scores below 90%, they do not progress to the next step. One of the brand’s secrets? Smiling and eye contact during the interview process are knockout criteria.
“There’s either a culture you nurture or there’s a de facto culture,” Vivian said. “We nurture ours.” If you ask Vivian to point to a statistic that makes him proud to run Regents Pizzeria, he doesn’t list the sales figures—he talks about tenure: Ten percent of Regents’ 75-person team has been with the restaurant for over 10 years. Some have been there for 15 years or more.
Vivian calls the company’s philosophy “Ultimate Hospitality,” a concept that blends ideas pulled from Danny Meyer and Will Guidara. “We’re very focused on people,” he said. “If we’re focused on our team, they’re going to be happier, and they’re going to be much more likely to do what we ask them to do and to delight our guests.”
Success Engineered
Just as important as culture are the systems sustaining it. Vivian learned early that great food wasn’t enough—it had to be consistent. He leans heavily on structured processes such as temperature-controlled dough management, time standards and line checks.
“We are very meticulous,” he said. “We have logs that measure everything…the temperature of the flour, the mixer, the ambient temperature. We have time specs for how long the dough can be balled, rested, brought to temp. That’s just one example.”
Service is systemized, too. “We have a six-step service sequence managed by a dedicated service manager each shift,” Vivian added. Regents runs with the rigor of a multi-unit chain, but with the creativity of an independent.
The Future
If you’re wondering why Regents hasn’t expanded, you’re not alone. It’s a question posed to Vivian often, but he has no trouble explaining. Vivian spent decades as a restaurant turnaround specialist, working for large industry brands across huge footprints. Regents has been his chance to try to max out a single-unit concept in his backyard—a task he is thrilled to tackle in the twilight of his career.
“My ambition at this stage in my career is to develop the team where we have a legacy, and this restaurant will be here for generations,” he said. That doesn’t mean Regents won’t ever expand in the future. In fact, Vivian and his team have already designed a smaller, 1,800-square-foot prototype featuring 12 taps fit for future growth when his managing partners—including Reutter—are ready for it. “The legacy team will take us forward,” he said. “I’ll just provide whatever advice they need.”
But there’s also a pragmatic reason they’re standing pat for now. “Honestly, we make more money by growing at this rate—this incremental volume—than opening another restaurant,” he said. A $2 million second location would be less profitable than the increases Regents has generated from continual refinement, Vivian pointed out.
Regents Pizzeria stands as one of the industry’s most compelling examples of what a single-unit restaurant can achieve through relentless consistency. If and when Vivian moves on, he’s confident the team will carry on his legacy—one started by a man, Carson, no longer with us, but whose vision has endured for 20 years and counting.
Charlie Pogacar is PMQ’s senior editor.
