&pizza is aiming to open 250 to 300 new stores by 2030 with between 80 and 90 percent of them franchised.
The 13-year-old Washington, D.C.-based pizza company filed its franchise disclosure document in February in 30 states. It has 46 locations in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
Michael Lastoria said he would never franchise after launching &pizza with Steve Salis in 2012.
Thirteen years later, Lastoria’s Washington, D.C.-based restaurant company is counting on a franchising to rekindle development after it closed 13 units in 2024.
&pizza, which owns 46 locations in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, filed its franchise disclosure document in February. It will begin to recruit franchisees and establish partnerships at next week’s Multi-Unit Franchising Conference in Las Vegas.
Mike Burns took over as CEO of &pizza in 2023.
“We won’t have a booth there but we’ll be busy shaking hands and meeting potential candidates, including those that have already expressed an interest. The Vegas show will be like our ‘coming out’ party,” said &pizza CEO Mike Burns. He said there are already three to four deals in the works and “we’re really close to taking them across the finish line.”
&pizza can sell franchises in 30 states. The brand is anticipating adding another dozen states to that list by April as it makes a national development push. Burns said &pizza is aiming to open 250 to 300 new stores by 2030 with between 80 and 90 percent of them franchised.
The total investment range for &pizza is $400,000 to $800,000, including the $40,000 to $80,000 franchise fee. Its average unit volume for the middle third of its corporate stores is $1 million with the top third coming in at $1.4 million.
The restaurant sells customizable oblong-shaped pizzas and the company tailors each location to its neighborhood with local artists designing the interiors. Some locations serve beer, wine and cocktails.
To promote its hip and edgy vibe, the restaurant pays employees if they get a tattoo of its ampersand logo.
When Listoria hired Burns to take over as CEO in 2023 it signaled a new direction for the company, which started off strong in its first decade but never seemed to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prior to joining &pizza, Burns was chief operating officer and executive vice president of Rave Restaurant Group, which owns the Pie Five Pizza and Pizza Inn concepts. His franchising experience also included being vice president of operations of Pei Wei Asian Kitchen and spending more than a decade overseeing 175 Bojangles locations. At one point, Burns coached women’s basketball in Boston at Emerson College.
He said it took a lot of work to get &pizza ready to franchise.
In the last year, the company overhauled the chain’s tech stack and relaunched its website, mobile app, loyalty program and point-of-sale systems at all its locations. The company also streamlined operations to simplify the pizza-making process. Sixty percent of stores are now equipped with kiosks to speed up ordering.
Burns said bringing the tech stack in house and partnering with tech providers Toast, Olo and Thanx saved the company nearly $1 million.
Another initiative at &pizza was to design stores that are smaller and cheaper to build. Burns said future locations will be more focused on drive-thru and third-party service with footprints between 700 and 1,200 square feet.
“I was brought in pretty much with the purpose to grow the brand through franchising,” Burns said. “But before we can do anything we needed to fix our four walls and getting our house in order and I’m proud to report that we’ve done that and are ready to move forward with our next exciting chapter.”
As far as future development, Burns said &pizza is targeting smaller underserved pizza markets, such as Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Austin, Texas. Its 19- to 30-year-old customer base will play well in smaller college towns and on college campuses, where convenience and speed are priorities.
“We’re never going to be able to play with the Pizza Huts, Dominos and Papa John’s, but we’re looking at markets where pizza is not super established yet and there’s no huge footprint of pizza there,” Burns said. “We see plenty of space to grow in those smaller markets for people who crave 100 percent all natural fresh ingredients.
“We have a 2030 plan where we’re going to crawl before we can walk and then run. We’ll build one or two restaurants this year at the most, maybe even with company-owned stores to get off the ground. After that, it’s off the races.”