Before Beto Guajardo accepted the position of Blaze Pizza CEO in January 2023, he went on his own national tour visiting restaurants incognito.
He was met with a high degree of inconsistency in execution and employee pride, and consequently, customer experience. His first impression was that he had a golden opportunity to improve the quality that Blaze had previously promised customers in each of its locations.
“When I first showed up to Pasadena, I inherited a team that was hungry for success and they really wanted to get back on to that track of growth that they had experienced pre-COVID, pre-2018,” Guajardo says. “However, they were lacking what I would call big-picture opportunities, big ideas.”
Innovation was slow. The company wanted to win, but over the years, they lost purpose and the direction of what they wanted to be, what they wanted to stand for, and how they were going to translate that into a brand experience for customers.
This wasn’t Guajardo’s first rodeo. He’s been in the industry for several years, including big stops at Starbucks as senior vice president of global strategy and Focus Brands (now GoTo Foods) as president of international. One leadership lesson he was given long ago was that the most important element when stepping into an organization is listening and asking questions. Also, be careful of the opinions and judgments you may have because oftentimes there’s a good rationale for how companies have arrived at a particular place.
He thought the listening period would be 90 days. In reality, it was 30. At that point, it became clear to Guajardo that the 330-unit Blaze needed a roadmap and something it could set sights on. The brand developed strategies covering operations, product, promotion, innovation, technology, and back-of-house efficiencies. The plan seemed overwhelming, but Guajardo began filling key leadership roles to manage the transformation. In June 2023, Blaze announced the addition of Kevin Moran as chief development officer and Johnny Tellez as COO, both former employees of Focus Brands. In January, he brought on CMO Christian Kuhn, another veteran of Focus Brands.
Guajardo wasn’t looking for people to agree with him. He knows he can’t learn anything when everyone’s telling him “yes.” The executive figured out that solutions come from people challenging, asking for clarity, or saying “no” altogether. It takes that dynamic, but Guajardo understands that individuals can’t reach that point of comfort unless trust has been established. And to him, nothing builds trust faster than going through a difficult time and coming out the other side successfully.
“When we’re together as a leadership team, discussing our strategies, our next moves, our financial decisions, if we’re all agreeing, there’s probably something wrong,” Guajardo says. “I mean, it can’t be that obvious right there. It’s something we’re not looking at. But in that room, once we’ve discussed and made a decision, we walk out of that room and we are all in agreement. The chemistry within the four walls of the leadership team has to be open and collaborative and challenging. But outside of those four walls, it has to be communicative and supportive of the decisions that have been made.”
On the franchisee side of things—in those early months of Guajardo’s leadership—the team looked at various domestic and international markets and leveraged research to identify what trade areas had the most potential for growth in the future. Once that was completed, it was about re-establishing new relationships with potential investors.
“It really began with resurrecting a lot of the things that made Blaze special back in its early days—ways to engage with employees, to recognize them, to give them the tools to deliver great hospitality—things that had been part of the brand’s DNA that had just gotten tired or lost over the years,” Guajardo says. “Much of what we did was resurrect what had already been there.”
Rethinking the Menu
So far, the biggest publicized evolution has been the menu. In June, Blaze invited franchisees, media, and other key stakeholders to its Reimagined & Refire’d event in Orlando where it unveiled 14 new innovations—something the chain hadn’t done in 10 years. This rollout, scheduled to arrive throughout 2024, features five new signature pizzas, salads, a dessert, and more.
Kuhn, who played a big role in the menu launch, says he walked into a company that gave him full license to be creative.
“We need you to go make this brand relevant, get people to talk about us and please help our business,” says Kuhn, recalling what Blaze required of him. “And so imagine that somebody just says, ‘Go!’ They’re not asking you. They’re not telling you what to do. They’re not putting any limits on you. It’s a pretty special job. I have a brand that hasn’t innovated in 10 years. Same signature pizzas for the last 12 years. I’m not the smartest guy in the room. I just need to put some new pizzas out just to get people to talk.”
Guajardo says some research had been conducted around menu structure challenges before his arrival. When he came in, the company distributed a survey asking thousands of customers what was most important to them and did Blaze deliver against it. The brand also asked the same question about its competition, which it considers to be quick service and casual—any place where consumers could choose to eat lunch and dinner. Survey results showed that value was important to guests and that Blaze was not meeting the mark. Guajardo says the chain didn’t position itself as the highest-priced fast casual, but it wasn’t the lowest either. It was in the middle, and the company felt that was appropriate for the quality of the product. However, Blaze discovered that over the years, quantity became an important element of the value proposition. Customers are concerned with how much food they’re getting for say, $12 or $13.
“If you go out and read how much a burrito weighs, it’s a pound,” Guajardo says. “You go out and weigh a bowl from a fast casual, Mediterranean build-your-own bowl, and that thing is heavy. You look at a pizza and it may look to have quantity. But if you actually weighed that pizza, it didn’t weigh as much. It’s not all about weight and I don’t want to leave the impression that our formula is shifting from quality to quantity. Not at all. But when I looked at the builds on our pizzas, truth be told, we had a lot of opportunity to make them more scrumptious.”
Customers would select the build-your-own option and pile on toppings at a much thicker rate than the signature pizzas. So Blaze began running tests in June 2023 involving new signature pizzas at a value price. For example, it unveiled a double pepperoni pizza with 32 slices instead of 16. It also showcased a hearty margherita pizza. The conclusion was that build-your-own is mostly for the fans and that Blaze needed to provide better, heftier signature pizzas to attract new, uninitiated guests. The chain didn’t want the build-your-own option to be the only way someone could have a valuable experience at the restaurant.
“There are many customers who come to Blaze who know what they love and they build themselves a great pizza, but there’s probably an equal number of customers who come to Blaze who don’t know how to build a great-tasting pizza,” Guajardo says. “And we needed to up our game, improve our menu, and give them choices so that they didn’t have to think as much about how to actually create it themselves and they could pick it right off the menu list.”
Kuhn emphasizes that Blaze makes its dough fresh every day, but the chain hasn’t done the best job of marketing it. Part of the menu relaunch was finding ways to take that fresh dough and use it in other places, like new pizzas, a Cinnamon Bread dessert, salads laid on top of a crust, and a foldable creation, called the Spicy Pepperoni Fast Fire’d Fold. Kuhn recognizes that everyone has a meat lover’s pizza; Blaze decided to do the same, but labeled it as “the Carnivore” with a mix of pepperoni slices, julienned ham, and crumbled meatballs. There’s also the Blazed BBQ Pizza made with barbecue sauce, mozzarella cheese, grilled chicken, red onion, and pickled jalapeño peppers.
The CMO believes now is the best time for Blaze to take over the fast-casual pizza marketplace.
“That’s what we got to do. So this is a brand that people know about, probably forgot about,” Kuhn says. “Maybe you come once a year. We got to make this brand exciting again. It’s a sense of urgency. We’ve had negative comp growth for 14 months. Well, everybody else, the industry, I can’t wait around. I don’t have years. I got to think in days and months, that’s why we fired up everybody.”
Firing Up Growth
Joe Stein, a franchisee who’s been with the organization for 10 years, has seen a lot of evolution but adds that it hasn’t been enough. He views Guajardo’s tenure as a tipping point because, for the first time, he’s seen “a real sea change in what we’re doing, which I think has been a bit overdue.” The rollout of new signature pizzas, and more innovation coming behind it, is taking Blaze out of its stale state and into an acceleration phase, he says.
Stein was part of fast-casual pizza’s rise, but he’s been in the business long enough to understand that momentum is cyclical. He remembers when poke concepts began popping up everywhere in Southern California. He also points to the current hot chicken craze taking over the U.S. Once upon a time, fast-casual pizza was hot because it was new and people gravitated toward it. Inevitably, the concept became less sexy and the chain didn’t pivot correctly. Blaze also had to deal with COVID, a time when social distancing and health concerns didn’t entice people to walk into stores and craft their own pizzas.
Now in the post-pandemic era, Stein feels Blaze is making thoughtful changes for a brighter future.
“What I love about Beto, a couple of things, is his strategic mindset,” Stein says. “I mean, he’s an old McKinsey guy. So you would expect to have some of that and bring in the right people to figure out the vision and the brand essence, which is really important for a brand. You have to understand what drives the brand and what ignites their passion in the brand and he’s been working on that.”
One significant decision was moving the company headquarters from Southern California to Atlanta. Guajardo says the move won’t affect operations on the West Coast and that Blaze continues to see growth potential in the state. However, a move to Atlanta offers several strategic advantages. The Pasadena office was downsized during COVID, and to reignite an office culture, the chain needed to find a new place anyway. Atlanta provides 40 percent less costs than Pasadena for comparable quality and size. Also, the company is in the process of filling several roles, and Atlanta’s lower cost of living and talent pool make it an attractive location for recruitment. The city is a thriving hub for the restaurant industry, with numerous private equity firms and corporate headquarters based in the market.
The move also aligns with Blaze’s development plans, especially in underpenetrated regions such as the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast.
Guajardo says future restaurants will be built according to what customers desire. Drawing from his Starbucks experience, he recounts how the coffee brand intuitively thrived on creating a theatrical experience where customers could watch their drinks being made and interact with baristas. The introduction of drive-thrus and mobile ordering revealed that guests also appreciated convenience and minimal interaction. Applying these insights to Blaze, Guajardo says that while the core build-your-own pizza concept remains central to the brand, it’s crucial to let customers choose their preferred way of engaging. Whether through traditional in-store interactions, online ordering, or other convenient options, Blaze aims to cater to diverse customer preferences.
He made sure to note that dine-in will always be a fundamental part of the company’s brand identity.
“As a matter of fact, I would contend that I want customers to start with that experience,” Guajardo says. “We have to continue to invite new guests in to have that down-the-line experience with us so that they can actually understand what is special about a Blaze pizza and how it is produced and how it’s made. To see the ingredients and the quality, you know that we have to build an emotional connection with what it means to build a great artisanal pizza fast-fire’d in under 180 seconds.”
With off-premises exploding in the past few years, Guajardo understands that Blaze must also offer a viable pickup solution that keeps pizza quality in check. He suggests the future launch of smaller satellite locations without seating to fulfill the needs of customers who live outside of a traditional restaurant’s trade area. But none of this is possible if guests never come to stores to begin with. That’s why Blaze has worked on fixing the time it takes for customers to receive their meals.
He mentions the importance of creating separate production lines to serve different types of customers efficiently. For those who come in and interact directly with staff, the traditional line remains the focus, ensuring they receive personalized attention. Meanwhile, online orders are handled on a secondary line, out of sight but with the same high-quality products and fast-fire’d cooking process. By separating these lines, Blaze can better manage predictability and streamline operations within the store.
“As one of our franchise operators told me, ‘Beto, if there are five people in line and you’re the fifth person, I want you to know that it’s only going to take you five minutes to get your pizza handed down at the expo. It can’t be five people in line, it takes me 25 minutes,” Guajardo says.
In terms of store development, Blaze has ambitious international expansion plans, including a recently signed development agreement in Dubai. There are ongoing discussions for additional agreements in the Middle East, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and newly initiated talks in Latin America.
“I know that’s a little vague and it’s a lot, but what do you expect you would get when you bring on board a chief development officer who has the strength and experience of a Kevin Moran, who has done international development for so long?” Guajardo says. “I mean, this is his bread and butter and he’s got a great domestic team supporting him in the U.S.”
Blaze finished 2023 with 296 stores in the U.S., 96 percent of which were franchised. Between 2021 and 2023, the chain’s U.S. footprint decreased by 13 units.
A New Pizza Era
Guajardo acknowledges that franchisees were likely skeptical when he entered the brand. As he explains, CEOs don’t join companies with stagnating sales just to hold onto what’s always been done. So operators assumed that a new direction was coming. They were worried that Guajardo would have opinions on what could be done without understanding the business and history or having the necessary proof to push forward certain strategies.
That’s why the listening tour was so crucial.
“So fast forward, three months, six months, I’d like to believe that it was my level of consistency in what I was saying and what I was doing, walking the talk, that began to build the confidence within our franchisees, our partners, our employees, that things were going to be different at Blaze Pizza,” Guajardo says. “That when we said we were going to do something, we actually got it done right. Fast forward moving into this year, bringing on board new leadership, suddenly, now we’ve got the team on the field that’s actually going to run the place and we’re moving faster than we ever had before.”
It was time for Blaze to grow outside of itself and connect more with communities to have a lasting and effective impact. Something that would last beyond novelty, which carried the fast-casual pizza segment for years, but has clearly worn thin with customers. According to Guajardo, “Novelty is a wonderful momentum builder. When you’ve got novelty, you can hide a lot of mistakes for several years.”
Stein says the new executive team has done a better job of engaging with franchisees. He’s one of six members of the franchise advisory committee—a body that serves as a conduit for any issues in the system. Most companies have this. The difference with Blaze is that conversations between franchisees and the franchisor are incredibly collaborative. He recalls a meeting that was supposed to be four hours, but lasted five and a half because of a much-needed back-and-forth discussion.
“That’s what you want to see in those meetings because I have 35 years of restaurant experience and Wayne Albritton has 30-plus years,” Stein says. “So between the six members of the franchise advisory committee, we have 100-plus years of experience. Why wouldn’t you want to tap into that? And Beto and his group do a great job of collaborating with us because ideas can come to me. So that’s not like some franchisors that talk the talk but don’t really want to collaborate. They do, which is great.”
Despite flat sales post-COVID, Blaze has a strong balance sheet and income statement thanks to the stability of private equity partner Brentwood Associates. Guajardo thinks this consistency will bode well for the chain’s resilience in a competitive market that might see consolidation.
The company is focusing on reimagining and refining its offerings rather than starting over. New menu items and innovative products are being introduced to enhance the dining experience and drive profitability for franchisees. Guajardo praises the supply chain team and distribution partners for their help in bringing new ideas and ingredients to the table.
Additionally, Blaze is updating its store designs and color palette to refresh its image. This includes introducing new voices in the marketplace to represent what the brand stands for and believes in.
“It’s an exciting time to be a part of Blaze Pizza,” Guajardo says. “As a matter of fact, I would argue it’s the most exciting time to be a part of Blaze Pizza because we are on our next horizon of growth.”
