Stoner’s Pizza Joint was not initially launched with marijuana-tinged intentions behind the name.
In 2013, founder Joel Harn referred to his Savannah, Georgia, pizzeria as “Stoner’s,” due to the stone oven used to cook pizza. The name clicked. It did even more so when the brand became Stoner’s Pizza Joint, a play on words as a nod to the growing cannabis industry.
Over the next five years, the company grew to 20 units. In 2018, Harn sold Stoner’s Pizza Joint, which caused a disruption to franchisees and forced the brand to sink to 10 locations.
However, the chain still appealed to John Stetson, who progressed from a curious customer to a dedicated franchisee and, ultimately, a passionate CEO.
“I had just had kids and I live in downtown Fort Lauderdale, and there was no quick-service restaurant to grab a slice on the way back from the park with the kids,” Stetson says. His friend, who had been an investor in Stoner’s Pizza Joint, prompted Stetson to check out the brand. “I said, ‘You know what? Maybe I’ll just be a franchisee and own one and put it right down the street from me!’”
In November 2019, Stetson joined as a franchisee, quickly opening nine stores in two years. With almost 20 years of finance and private equity experience, Stetson says, “I have an addictive personality when it comes to finance and business. And well, I can’t really own one of these, I have to own 10 of these.”
At the beginning of COVID, Stetson rushed to open a half-dozen locations himself, while simultaneously acquiring four locations from corporate. “While I was in that process,” Stetson says, “I didn’t really like how the organization was being run, so I bought everyone out and became CEO and owner of the brand in May 2020.”
After Stetson looked at the metrics of opening costs and revenue per unit, he found that Stoner’s Pizza Joint was “by far the best bang for your buck in the market. And on top of that, the quality of ingredients and pizza that we put out for the price is, I think, the best you can get. When I put all those together, I thought that I could really take this brand to the next level.”
“The joke is that I bought myself a job,” he says, “but anything I get involved in, I want to make successful, I want the product to be great, I want the brand to be successful, and that’s why I’m here, five years later.”
Today, the brand is just over 50 units.
With the goal of surpassing 100 units in the next 18 months, Stetson also leveled up his executive team, bringing in individuals with significant hospitality experience. Thirty locations are franchised—split amongst 10 franchisees—and 20 are corporately owned. The brand is looking for more capable franchisees to push for growth.
Stoner’s Pizza Joint offers a menu made fresh daily, using no frozen ingredients and a handmade dough with a secret recipe. “Pizza’s basically made by how good your crust is and how good your cheese is, and so we really focus on all high-quality ingredients,” Stetson says.
The chain also prides itself on providing an affordable price point.
“My goal was, I’m a family of four, I wanted to make sure a family of four could be fed for $20-30,” he says. “You look at some of these specialty pizza concepts, and a large pie or a specialty pie is north of $30, then you add in the salad and breadsticks and cookies, and you’re coming in at around $100—it’s just not affordable.”
Takeout and delivery have grown rapidly since COVID, with third-party aggregators mixing almost 60 percent in bigger markets. Roughly 15 to 20 percent of customers eat inside, so dining rooms are still used, especially by the lunch crowd. Three stores have no dining room, except for a handful of bar seats. Stoner’s Pizza Joint restaurants are partially individualized, depending on location and surrounding factors. Downtown iterations have larger dining spaces to fit the bustling crowds, while other units have beer walls to transform a pizza run into an experience.
“The variety comes where the location and demographics are,” Stetson says. “There’s places where we go a little on the edge of the Stoner’s Pizza Joint, going close to the ‘legal marinara,’ own a ‘joint,’ ‘get baked.’ On college campuses, we’re a little more liberal with it, and then in a place like Charleston, that doesn’t resonate as much, it’s toned down, I’d call it.” Therefore, the brand is known as Stoner’s Pizza in several markets.
“We’ve found that you have to be nimble in this market,” Stetson says. The brand recently launched an app that allows customers to gain rewards and enables delivery, which helps the chain capture guest data that it isn’t seeing through third-party services.
Stoner’s Pizza Joint also sparked a partnership with the NHL’s Florida Panthers. After attending a match and trying the in-arena pizza (which Stetson believed was substandard), the CEO immediately set up a meeting to strike a deal. Five months later, the brand has its own huge concession stand and is looking to provide pizza for the whole stadium.
While he was a franchisee during the pandemic, Stetson heard feedback from employees about their children being unable to get free lunch while schools were closed. “That really resonated with me,” he says, “so I made a pledge to donate 10,000 slices to community centers for those children who rely on that free meal… that led to [donating to] hospital workers, Salvation Army, the food banks—pretty much anywhere that’s willing to accept it I’ll donate it.”
“I’m all about trying to bond with the community because this is my backyard,” Stetson says. “These are people that I see every day, and who can’t bond over pizza?”
