&pizza CEO Mike Burns believes fast-casual pizza is dead. Or at least, it’s changed from what consumers knew it to be.
Pre-COVID, &pizza was 70 percent dine-in, as was most of its peers. The brand had a reputation for loud music, cool employees, and a differentiated in-restaurant experience. It wowed customers with thick crusts designed for on-premises occasions. The dough was fresh with five ingredients and no preservatives.
But in recent years, with consumers switching to digital, &pizza’s dining mix flipped to majority takeout and delivery. The chain responded by adjusting its dough to hold longer and changed the pizza box to ensure it could maintain heat. It added kiosks in dining rooms for another layer of convenience and switched digital platforms from a proprietary system to partnerships with Thanx, Toast, Olo, and Restaurant365. The POS system, website, and mobile app were all revamped.
Burns’ point is that &pizza has adapted without losing its charm or menu quality. He believes the brand has corrected itself and earned the right to expand beyond the 45 corporately owned restaurants throughout the DMV and Mid-Atlantic markets.
The company plans to achieve this through its first franchising program.
“The ampersand stands for unity and bringing communities together, and we feel like in order to do that, the owner of those restaurants has to live in those communities,” Burns says. “So if we’re going to develop in El Paso, Texas, or Tallahassee, Florida, or Charlotte, North Carolina, the person should live in that market because they know the people, they know the area.”
&pizza filed its FDD about a month ago. The first batch of operators will be contiguous. The chain has to make sure future stores fit within the supply chain, so there aren’t plans to jump all the way to the West Coast. With that said, the fast casual partners with a national food distributor, set up its tech stack to be plug-and-play for operators, and is building out a sophisticated franchise team.
“I think it’s always been franchisable,” Burns says. ” … The operation is simple. We sell one thing. We sell pizza. Now we sell knots, but it’s a variation of our pizza dough. It’s the same dough ball. So from a franchise perspective, the hardest thing we do is slice vegetables. We shred vegetables and chop pineapple in-house. It’s super fresh, but our dough comes as a standard 7-ounce dough ball. We teach you how to roll it and you’re off. I mean, there’s really nothing else. It’s super simple and not a very complicated brand.”
&pizza hopes to sign its first official deal within the next 90 days. The company added a franchising tab to its website about a month ago and it has received hundreds of inquiries since then. An official franchise website should launch within the next 30 to 45 days.
The chain wants to sign store agreements that include refranchised company restaurants. It’s also open to selling corporate locations without a development deal if the situation fits.
“We make sure that they’re heavily informed on what we do and how we operate and when we have them in for discovery days, it’s not just them to check us out. It’s like dating. You go both ways and make sure it’s the right fit for each of you,” Burns says. “Now will we miss? I hope we don’t. They have to follow the brand standards. Our FDD is pretty strict on the marketing plan. They can’t stray away from it. We should be very selective on who we choose.”
The brand prefers multi-concept operators with the necessary liquidity and restaurant experience. It’s willing to accept some who may work in hotels or convenience stores and put them through a training program, especially if they purchase company-owned restaurants that are already successful and don’t need as much groundwork.
Cultural fit may be the biggest priority. Burns joined &pizza as CEO in November 2023 with a mission to bring back the brand’s rebellious and in-your-face reputation. He doesn’t intend to lose that culture when he hands off the keys to operators. The chain does promotions around special occasions like Pride Month, 4/20, and Cinco de Mayo and hosts launch parties for new products like the Dickle (dill pickle–covered pizza). &pizza invites potential operators to events so they can get a feel for how the company operates.
“They’re going to look over in a corner and our head of HR is getting a beer funnel down somebody’s throat to win free pies for a year,” Burns says. “They see all the social media around [&pizza] tattoos,” Burns says. “They see that stuff.”
Burns says &pizza operates dozens of prototypes, each with varying designs and color schemes. To create a more cohesive brand image, the company will streamline its aesthetic approach. The primary design standard will feature a black-and-white color scheme, reflecting the brand’s original identity. However, localized accents may be introduced to align with regional markets.
The company is targeting a standard footprint of 1,200 square feet. Flexibility remains for spaces as small as 800 square feet, which may feature reduced seating, or larger locations of up to 2,400 square feet to accommodate additional elements such as a bar.
Over the past year, &pizza has phased out many of the deep discounts it introduced during the COVID era so future franchisees can maximize profitability. The company will prioritize sustainable economics over volume-driven promotions because of the belief that long-term success depends on strong operator margins rather than short-term sales spikes.
The end goal is to compete against not only pizza chains but also brands like CAVA, Panera, and Sweetgreen.
“This is actually moving a little bit faster than we thought, which is great news,” Burns says. “It just shows that there’s passion for the brand. People are excited about it. We feel we’re different than normal fast-casual pizza, but we hope that the people out there see that potential to grow their personal wealth … This is a long-term play for us. This isn’t just plug and play, you open a million stores in a couple of years and move on. This is a long-term strategy. We want the franchisees to make money.”
