Scott Gittrich with Topper’s Pizza

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Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, and this is going to be a fun one. Today we have with us Scott Gittrich with Topper’s Pizza. Welcome, Scott. How are you doing? I am doing well. Thank you so much for doing this today. I’m excited to learn your story. Tell us a little bit about Topper’s Pizza.

Scott Gittrich: [00:00:53] A little bit about Topper’s pizza. We consider ourselves the well-established but emerging brand because we’re at the front end of of some big growth here. I’m the founder of the business. We started 30 years ago this August. Our our founding vision was to be the QSR pizza place that makes our food from scratch and brings a bowl variety and recipes to our customers. So that’s where we that’s where we sit in the in the in the pizza industry. We’ve got a sixty nine restaurants in about 10 states. We’re headquartered in Whitewater, Wisconsin, and about two thirds of our restaurants are in Wisconsin and Minnesota. We’ve got a great average unit volumes, great franchise, great franchise Proposition four for business people. It’s been an incredible last three years and in particular during covid our concept with a commitment to technology, small footprints, delivery, fresh food made from scratch really has has done well. And here kind of emerging out of the pandemic, it’s more of the same. So we continue up over last year and we just feel really great about the environment where we’re positioned for the future.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:32] Now, let’s talk a little bit more about kind of the back story. You’ve been involved in the pizza industry like since you were a kid. And you talk about what attracted you to pizza as a young person and then what inspired you to kind of go out on your own at such a young age to start Topper’s?

Scott Gittrich: [00:02:53] Yeah, well, oh, man, you know, it’s. That’s an interesting way you ask that question, you know, little kids end up wanting to be teachers or policemen because that’s what they see. And I don’t know, I. I have a. I have fond memories of pizza places, you know, growing up and connecting with family and friends over pizza. It’s just it’s unequivocally the best food on Earth. I know that sounds ridiculous, but started in restaurants when I was 15. You touched a couple of really great leaders who really showed me a path to a wonderful career in restaurant in the restaurant business. I studied engineering and in college. And I actually have a degree in psychology. But my but truly, my heart’s always been in restaurants and such incredible humble work. Anybody that anybody has been on their hands and knees scrubbing the baseboard or or cooking and certainly for minimum wage, saying yes or no, sir, about cold fries or whatever. And I just have a strong and strong piece of my heart is is connected to the industry. I am. So I saved up some money working in working in a restaurant, saved up thirty thousand dollars with my my then wife. And you know, we saw the landscape of pizza was had emerged to be this at that point in nineteen ninety one there were essentially four mammoth pizza, food chain food, pizza food companies and. I felt like we felt that there was a real opportunity to do something special with the food, bring that QSR aspect, the delivery, small footprint, kind of the kitchen platform.

Scott Gittrich: [00:05:02] But to really do pizza, right. To respect pizza, make it from scratch. You have bold recipes, I mean, there are about 10 pizza toppings in nineteen ninety one, and we we we kind of broke the mold and put chicken on pizza and taco. And today we have mac and cheese and buffalo chicken and we put cheese curds on pizza. And, you know, Nashville hot chicken is what we’re doing right now. And we do have a big plant based line of pizzas and we’re just kind of the pizza place that that respects pizza and does it that we think does it right. We use, you know, real Wisconsin cheese, which you might think that the big people use, you know, real, real one hundred percent cheese. But that’s not true. They freeze it. They put fillers in it. And so that’s us. We do it right. Pizza. And we deliver it the way customers want. Topper’s dotcom. We’ve invested millions of dollars into our e-commerce solution and it is just incredible. We do. Last week it was almost seventy four percent of all of our sales came in, did digitally. So and that just continues to climb almost on a weekly basis. So we’ve just set ourselves up for what consumers, the way consumers like to like to eat today.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:34] Now, when you started it, was it built around? OK, I’m going to franchisees because at that time there was for whatever reason, I mean, you probably can you can speak to this better than I can. That part of the country, pizza places, you know, we’re born. You know what makes it about that part of the country that so, you know, that inspired the founding of so many pizza outfits.

Scott Gittrich: [00:07:00] Yeah, that’s an interesting question I’ve asked myself about myself, I suppose that certainly there’s some touch to pizza really got its foothold in the United States out of World War Two and all the guys that had spent some time in Italy in that kind of thing. That’s that’s the story. Certainly New York’s a hotbed of great pizza and Chicago. But certainly there’s a lot of a lot of change emerged out of the Midwest. I mean, you’re you’re right. Some great mom and pops on the coast and that kind of thing and everywhere. But some great chains have come out of the Midwest. It’s it’s it’s interesting. I’m going to have to go ahead and place it up, put it on those historical things. But, you know, when I started it, I didn’t necessarily think I wasn’t thinking, OK, I’m going to start a big franchise company and hired a bunch of consultants for that kind of thing. I’m really a restaurant person in my heart and an operator, and that’s what I grew up in. So we did think that, God willing, if we did a great job and customers loved us, that we fancied that it could be a great opportunity for the Topper’s pizza nation that we didn’t know yet. Those team members and people that if if we did a great job, that we suspected that if we could pull it off that it was it could grow. We believed in the opportunity, but we fought tooth and nail and I fought tooth and nail all along, just running great restaurants, taking care of customers, taking care of team members. And those first franchisees were team members. They were people who had grown up at Topper’s Pizza, spent a few years at Topper’s. They believed in what we were doing. They scratched up a little money from family and opened up, opened up a restaurant. And some of those franchisees are still franchisees today and have sent their kids off to college and have made great livings running three, four or five Topper’s pizza restaurants that they’ve opened over the years. So it’s pretty special now.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:12] So when you started out, you weren’t dreaming of of kind of empire building. You were just trying to make a good restaurant, a good pizza, and really separate yourself from a quality and innovation standpoint.

Scott Gittrich: [00:09:27] Yeah, I mean, it would probably be disingenuous to say that I didn’t have big business dreams. I I certainly did think that because I worked at a good restaurant companies that had grown and grown through franchising. Matter of fact, I’ve worked for franchisees a couple of times and really admired the franchise concept I. You know, my last my last gig was working for a franchisee at Domino’s Pizza for seven and a half years, and he’s one of my is he’s still today one of my business heroes. He’s retired now, but quite something. And I, I believe in the franchising idea that. Both parties, franchisor franchisee, when together, nobody can nobody can really win at the expense of the other. It’s it’s like a marriage. So you outside of a restaurant. The restaurant industry. I’m drawn to the franchising industry. I believe in it. It’s it’s quite something to be supportive of entrepreneurs, people that are putting all of their hard earned money on the line and pour in their heart into into basically the brand that, you know, that we’ve built over the years and not here. It works for them to to grow their own empire. And it’s it’s pretty it’s pretty awesome what’s happening right now and the people that are coming to us and the momentum that we’re where we’re building here as our current and new franchisees continue to grow.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:15] Now, can you talk about that transition from when you have your own restaurant and it’s about serving that customer and making the pies and being consistent and, you know, serving those people and growing sales individually in that restaurant. And then you decide to become a franchise owner and really put the pedal to the ground there. And now your training and development company and you’re helping other people sell one more pie and helping them make money faster. Was that kind of you know, that’s an entirely different business. Now you’re you’re doing a different kind of task every day and you’re having different metrics for success in that world. Ultimately, you’re helping people eat more pizza. But in your world now as a franchise owner, you’re helping other people sell more pizza. So how did that go? Did was that smooth sailing because of your experience with that franchisee, or was that something that was kind of at least a mental shift, I would imagine, of going from that, you know, local sales to OK, now I’m training and developing other folks?

Scott Gittrich: [00:12:23] It’s a good question. I think that there’s a personal question and a business question in there on the personal side. And it’s kind of all fun in some ways, like it’s an opportunity to learn and continue to grow in my role, you know, today as a CEO of, you know, a system of seventy five million dollars versus showing up every day in a restaurant twenty five, thirty years ago and working with a team of restaurant people to serve customers and certainly different but extremely interrelated work that the experience just builds on itself. For me personally, there’s certainly a part of me that. Thinks of my days actually in a restaurant in some ways, I’ve kind of idealized that, I always think of it like if I were a basketball player and eventually I owned the team or I was in upper management. And I kind of have a role. But I imagine myself on game day, sitting up in a skybox and looking down on the court and saying to the person next to me, I used to be a player, if something like that. I mean, I’ve I’ve actually joked with my wife that in retirement maybe we could start a little pizza place, you know, just the place that’s open three or four days a week where we just know our customers and have a small team.

Scott Gittrich: [00:13:51] And it sounds kind of silly, but it just it’s just like a lot of people’s work, you know, as you as you become successful, you work yourself out of whatever that great job was that got you first into that that line of work. Now, that being said, I love the work that I do today a lot. It’s definitely different. The you know, the shift is the shift is still one of scale and giving to run a great restaurant, still your drink, your pouring your time and energy into the people around you. And you’re building great restaurant people today. It’s you know, it’s having the right team at Topper’s Pizza that are pouring their time and energies into franchisee’s into management multiunit folks, store general managers. It still is a very giving sort of work because it’s people focused and it’s it’s a commitment to helping the people around you succeed at what they do and kind of let in and being very confident that if they’re successful, that that’s going to lead to the success, your own personal success, but also the success of the organization.

Scott Gittrich: [00:15:19] And that that’s really that’s really where we’re at. It’s you know, I’ll tell you this, there’s there’s franchise companies that are very good at you know, it’s almost like many people have a great idea in the rest. And the pizza business, I’d say when Fast Casual first came out, the Blazers models of the world, you know, whenever that was six, eight years ago, there was about a hundred of those places that immediately popped up, particularly on the coast. It was like every investment group went out and bought a single restaurant and tried to franchise it. And, you know, and they may have had business smarts, maybe even some of them had franchising smart, but it didn’t grow organically from some real concept that actually worked and resonated at the customer level in a store. So I’ll tell you what, if I could if I had to choose one thing, if you’ve got great restaurants that customers love and are fanatic for and and then you build you build up the business on top of that, or you’re a great business person and you’re going to figure out the restaurant as you go. That’s that’s born to lose right there.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:38] Right. You got to have that foundation. And the and the super fans are real. It’s not manufactured. And I think a lot of folks I think you’re exactly right that they have a concept and they just scale and hope. And, you know, that’s just tough for that franchisee because they’re buying the hope, you know, so that’s why, you know, the franchising world has those kind of stories of the disgruntled franchisee because of that. Now, in your case, it sounds like you built a really solid foundation. And it isn’t until fairly recently that the pedals to the ground and and you’re really expanding aggressively.

Scott Gittrich: [00:17:22] Yeah, we’ve had. We’ve opened double digit stores, and in any year, twice in the last five, six years or so, we’ve had our wave the forward kind of on environment, connecting with us and that kind of thing. But there’s been such a reset in the restaurant business. In the last in the last particularly year, you know, depending on who you believe, twenty to twenty five percent of the restaurants in the United States have closed every every single business. And, of course, every restaurant is has tried to quickly if they weren’t already, they tried to quickly go to delivery, trying to go to their go to e-commerce and try to find the partners that are going to work with them to be able to offer customers the right access, the right technological channels that customers look for. I’m telling you the things that are hot right now and that are. I realize that that’s not the right way to say it, because it’s not the things that are hot. It’s it’s it’s immerge the entire time. So these things are in our DNA and they really are in our DNA. From the time I started in restaurants to today, we made a bet, a bet that delivery was the way of the future. And for the last 30 years, food delivery has gone one direction, one direction. I mean, when I first started Topper’s, people would walk in the restaurant and they would they would literally look around and say, where do I sit down and eat? And we would we would explain to them what delivery, what we would say. It’s like Chinese. I mean, it’s amazing to think it was just 30 years ago that basically food delivery was still kind of emerging.

Scott Gittrich: [00:19:23] And today it’s like every restaurant, if they weren’t doing it a year and a half ago, they rushed to it now. And we self performed delivery. It’s in our DNA. This is what we do. And it’s very easy to see restaurant companies that are struggling to do that. Right, or they’re paying the better part of all of their sales to other people to market and and perform their delivery. Our technology, we were truly one of the first e-commerce restaurants in two thousand seven. Topper’s Dotcom was launched as a as a restaurant e-commerce engine. Of course, we did very little business as 14 years ago. I mean, again, this is amazing to think, but we have poured millions of dollars into our own proprietary e-commerce and point of sale solution so that during the pandemic we were set to serve our customers in this extremely important way. We didn’t have to try to quickly figure it out. We’re born and bred for this thing. And then the last piece I would say is, is the menu. We kind of sit in this place of quality, bold recipes. So it’s a little more complicated than maybe your classic franchise, how we how we cook and what we do in our kitchens. But it’s what consumers really are looking to get as high quality food that that serves diverse lifestyles. And even some of those lifestyles are identity kind of lifestyles like plant based pito, this kind of thing. And we’re uniquely set up to succeed in this in this environment.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:14] So let’s talk a little bit about the idea of franchisee. Is it that kind of person that always had the dream of having a pizza place, or is this a person that’s buying this as to add a complimentary piece to their already existing franchise portfolio?

Scott Gittrich: [00:21:29] Yeah, we’ve succeeded with both of those people, the thing that’s that is common among the right, the right fit for Takeshita is that they’re engaged. So we have a very strong culture where Topper’s is not going to be the right fit for somebody who has a portfolio of businesses unless they have committed and committed people that truly are in it, in it to be in the pizza business. It’s not the kind of thing where you’re the the franchisee is is off on a boat and somehow some manager is making it happen by themselves. Now, that being said, we certainly have. High net worth, folks, that that are business people who work with great restaurant operators, who are that person who run the Topper’s feet, their Topper’s pizza franchise. In that way, that that works. So. You know, that’s that’s the common thing, so we we have a franchise opportunities for a single store operators in the markets where we already served. So in Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Carolinas, Nebraska, and these places where we already have a good foothold, we have great single store opportunities for those for those in those markets, in places where it takes a little more wherewithal in order to be able to go into a market and build awareness more quickly where you really want two or three franchise companies that really can build out a market or make up make a strong footprint in three, four, five years. Know it takes a little bit more wherewithal. So we take both we take both approaches depending on the market and people.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:36] Now, if somebody wanted to learn more about Toppers, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website?

Scott Gittrich: [00:23:43] Topper’s dot com. You can find it. That’s our that’s our e-commerce site that you can find the button. There are Topper’s franchise dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:51] Good stuff. Well, Scott, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work. We appreciate you.

Scott Gittrich: [00:23:56] Thanks. Good questions. Have a great day.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:59] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see how next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.