By Alexandra Mortati | Photos courtesy of Mattenga’s Pizzeria
Hengam Stanfield might seem an unlikely candidate for running a fast-growing pizza brand. Born in Iran, she lived in Spain for 10 years and studied telecommunications engineering before moving to the U.S. to finish her degree in electrical engineering. There she met Matt Stanfield, now her husband and partner in Mattenga’s Pizzeria, which has been growing rapidly in San Antonio for more than a decade.
Hengam and Matt started out hosting dinners and making fresh pasta. “When we had our son, we realized we wanted to be in business for ourselves, but neither of us had ever worked a day in a restaurant,” she recalled. “We really didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into.”
Though they may not have had experience in foodservice, Hengam and Matt sold their house and moved from New Mexico to Texas, where they bought a failing pizzeria. “I always wanted to live in Texas,” she said. “Texans always brag about themselves! I loved San Antonio because it was a lot more family-friendly and had more diversity with the culture and food. It was a great place for us to raise our family.”
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Even so, she was a novice who didn’t even know how to slice a pizza. “I didn’t know anything about business or restaurants, and before we knew it, we had five employees.”
Starting out with a single restaurant, the Stanfields opened their ninth location in December 2024. So it’s amazing that all of this came to be through BizBuySell.com. “It’s similar to Zillow for buying brick-and-mortar businesses,” Hengam said. “We looked around San Antonio, and the price was in our range—about $140,000—but no one would give us a loan. We borrowed money from Matt’s dad. [At that time], I had two kids that were under two and was really unhappy. I hadn’t been able to take time off and wanted to be more self-sufficient and flexible. Granted, a restaurant is not conducive to that for a while. I went two years without taking a day off after we bought the restaurant and rented a house without seeing the house. We signed the papers, and that was it.”
Luckily, Hengam and Matt had family support. “My parents lived with us, helped us with the kids, and worked at the restaurant. We didn’t pay them for two years, but they saw we were very passionate. We weren’t reckless. Matt’s dad saw we were going to honor their money, and when we could, we started paying them back monthly. I don’t know what went through their heads that they allowed it…I have great in-laws! Having that support, people who give you their time and ears and tell you you’ll figure it out, even basic support, is incredible! We now have nine locations and four kids.”
Bold Moves
A strong support system can make all the difference. “You need support, even at home, to make your business successful, especially as a woman. In order to stay focused, I had to know my family was taken care of. I was blessed to have our parents living with us. Otherwise, if you want to build something little, it’s not worth the effort. Like Texas, you may as well go big or go home. We wanted to build something big and substantial. Our parents saw our vision and supported it. They’ve spent the last decades helping us out, so that adds pressure to go out there and make bold moves.”
“Bold moves” is the right term for it. With nine locations under her belt, Hengam is the first to tell you that you never truly feel prepared for the next one. “As soon as you think you might be ready for another, five people quit or a manager moves on. You have to move forward despite being ready or not. You have to take a calculated risk. It was four years before we opened our second store, but then we opened four in 2022. It’s about having a vision and clarity. Are we going to continue on this path, or are we going to sell? Are we building to sell, or are we building to grow and scale?”
In 2019, the Stanfields received a tempting offer to sell their two stores for $540,000, Hengam remembers. “And it was at a time when we really weren’t that profitable. We were making maybe $100,000 a year. We had an identity crisis and were like, ‘Well, we’d probably do food again because we love food and love serving people.’ We realized this was already our dream. We were already positioned, so starting from scratch made no sense. We chose not to sell and to go all in. Once you make the decision, people will show up because you communicate that vision, and they come onboard.”
Hengam and Matt learned that they each had their strengths and could be most successful by dividing responsibilities. “He’s accountable for different aspects of the business. I don’t know what insurance we have, but I’m involved in sponsorship, partnership and marketing. We divide and conquer,” she said.
“I’ve always worked ops more than he has, but he would run deliveries. I am stronger operationally running a Friday night line and making food. He doesn’t make pizzas. He is more the CEO, and I’m involved with a lot, but more the COO. I handle manager issues and performance on an operational level. I manage sales, media and marketing. He makes more big-picture decisions and looks at finances, expenditures and compliance issues and has a final say on HR.”
But maintaining healthy communications doesn’t mean mistakes won’t happen. “They are bound to happen,” Hengam said. “My husband may go buy a piece of equipment at an auction where he has to drive six hours to pick it up, and then, a week later, it stops working. I’m not going to beat [him up about] it. I spent $4,000 on a mailer, and he’s not going to tell me I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s not a fruitful conversation or beneficial.”
Leveraging Your Gifts
Hengam’s engineering degree hasn’t gone to waste. “It’s been helpful,” Hengam said. “I didn’t see the advantages we had for many years. We have a deep understanding of our numbers, spreadsheets, projections, mapping out projects…it’s effortless.
“Everybody has a different gift, so being a woman has both advantages and disadvantages, depending on which side of the coin you look at. It’s the same with being an engineer. Sometimes I face communication barriers and am not as good with people. Sometimes, I prefer to deal with the processes. It’s how you leverage your gifts.” But she adds, “Being a woman and a mom has given me a layer of understanding of people I never had before. Even reading body language. It’s about EQ (emotional intelligence), whether with customers or employees.”
However, there are downsides to being a woman, too. “I’m not pro-gender differences. I come from Iran, where there are a lot of differences. Here, we had all the tools and resources, and I have still had to deal with people who treat me differently. I didn’t want to believe it, but it would be different when my husband was there versus when I was alone. We hired two gentlemen, and one helped us expand. He had been a director of operations at Domino’s and oversaw nine locations. He was very different talking to me versus me and my husband.”
All in all, Hengam adds, “I’ve never had problems working with women, it’s been more with men. There’s a narrative in society [about the roles of women and men], and I believe in women being strong and men being strong. I am a strong woman. I have a lot of opinions. I escaped from Iran, so I’m not going to sit in the corner and not be seen. My husband is OK with that because he is a strong man. In a business, if you are in a position of management, you are strong. However, ego can get in the way. You cannot bring that to any kind of relationship. You must have grace, be able to move on, and not [pit] people against one another. It’s not what we want in our company culture.”
Values and Culture
Maintaining a positive culture, in fact, has been a priority for Hengam. “We have multiple values which are really enforced,” she says. “It goes back to Texas hospitality. We want our team to be ‘unreasonable’ when it comes to hospitality, and there’s a book called Unreasonable Hospitality that we made our managers read.”
Hengam’s efforts worked, and her team truly embodies their values, she said. “We got a comment on social media recently saying that a kid put a coin in a toy machine, but no toy came out. The machine is not ours, someone sets it up, so our manager, who is a dad himself, went to dollar Tree and got stuffed animals for the kid. The manager never told us he did that, so we wouldn’t have known if the customer hadn’t messaged us about it. When you have people who go above and beyond for others without being seen and without acknowledgement, that’s special. Those are the people we want. We want to celebrate those stories.”
One of Hengam’s key business principles harkens back to her previous career. “The other value is ‘engineered’: really believing in business math and being meticulous about numbers. I’m studying the Toyota culture right now and standardizing work with our managers. Another core value is always investing. We are always learning. We take our managers to business conferences, including ones that aren’t restaurant-related. It allows our customers, team and company to win. When we coach team members who aren’t meeting expectations, we go back to these values.”
Even with a strong focus on hospitality and education, the management part can still be challenging for Hengam. “It’s been a challenge to manage some of the hard conversations. We had an employee who was 16—a kid—make a bomb threat, and Homeland Security showed up.”
Challenges extend beyond restaurant management as well. “Understanding cash flow was another issue,” she said. “We didn’t make a profit for a few years until we understood our numbers.”
Now, for Hengam, nothing beats the sound of a busy dining room on a Friday night. “I love kids running around. All of our locations have train and Lego tables. What is more important than making kids happy? I love serving people good food and bringing them together. We want to attract the right people and provide that same feeling online. Look at our social media, and you’ll see some of our kids in some of our videos.”
Hengam hopes to continue growing Mattenga’s Pizza so she can provide more opportunities for people. “Our managers and staff are going to plateau. We had someone who worked for us for four years at one store, but how much more opportunity could we give him? When you have a bigger business, you are able to provide good opportunities. We have a team of 100, and it’s a privilege to provide opportunities for them. We need district managers, regional managers, a media team…We work hard for our team, and they work hard for us. They give so much, so we have to be able to give back. It’s maybe 10% who really care for your business, but they make you want to go out and work much harder. We’re hoping to get to 100 units in the next 10 years….You need people to build a business. Those 10% of people really drive the rest. [Mattenga’s] has to be a place for women and couples, especially as a family business.”
Hengam is bold, tenacious and empowering. She welcomes a challenge and isn’t afraid to jump all in, even if she doesn’t know how deep the water is. She gives everything her all, including building up those around her without losing her sense of self. Her authenticity and values shine through everything she does.
Alexandra Mortati is the marketing director for Orlando Foods and founder of Women In Pizza, a not-for-profit organization that empowers women in the pizza industry to share their stories, display their talents, inspire innovations, and connect with one another and the world. This article originally appeared on the Instagram account for Women In Pizza. Click here to learn more about the organization.
