[SpotOn Series] Revolutionizing Pizza Franchising With Carl Comeaux, CEO of Crust Pizza Co.
Carl Comeaux 08:44
In a franchisee. So we love the corporate America employees that are making 150 to 200,000. That usually has a 401K or has a savings account of around 200,000 plus. And they’re sick and tired of working for the man. And they’re ready to own their own business. And so that’s our number one. The reason they’re working 60 hours a week right now. They usually have great skills. And they’re green. Most of them are green to the restaurant space. But that’s okay because we could teach them for the first time how to run a restaurant, how to be a business owner, and then they don’t have any bad habits. Right. And they have that work ethic and passion to make it happen. And so we love the owner operators. They do a fantastic job. And at the end of the day, they have to be in their communities. They have to become like the mayor of their community. But for Crust and when they do that, they’ll see even more, more success. And then of course, we’re looking for the multi-unit franchisees. But we know those come the bigger we get. And so they’re looking at our food even without contacting us. There’s websites where they go on and see, hey, what’s Crust doing and what’s the unique economics. So they’re going to come, usually they come around 50-plus locations. So probably in about a year, year and a half we’ll start seeing more multi-unit franchisees knock on our door. but we already have a couple of them and all of our owner operators. They’re opening up more stores, so that means that we’re doing something right. At the end of the day, we don’t want to have 150 locations and 150 franchisees. We want our franchisees to grow and have multiple stores.
Chad Franzen 10:32
So you have overseen this expansion, but you also own a place in Lake Charles, a Crust Pizza Co.
Carl Comeaux 10:40
Yeah, yeah. So we have seven corporate stores. Right. And so of the 37 are corporate and the rest of franchise. But now moving forward it’s all franchised locations.
Chad Franzen 10:51
So when somebody who is a successful who’s been successful in their career up to now and they leave corporate America to go, you know, own their own Crust Pizza Co., what would you say based on your experience? What are some of the keys to their success?
Carl Comeaux 11:06
Some of the keys to their success is they have to believe and love the brand. That’s first, right? Like they have to love Crust Pizza. And so if it’s someone that had never tried Crust Pizza before, we fly them down and we want them to try it because they have to first fall in love with who Crust is. Second, they have to have our values. That’s very important. At the end of the day, they could be a great operator, but if they don’t have our values and they’re not in line with that, then it’s not going to be a good relationship. And our values are first is commitment to giving back to the community that we love, which is big to us. When we go into a new community, we embrace that community. And we do spirit nights for schools, for churches, for organizations. This past year, we actually did a really cool initiative with Saint Jude Hospital. We raised over $100,000 this year. Gives me the chills thinking about it. And so we’re truly committed to not only giving back to the community, but now we’re giving back global through the initiative with Saint Jude. Second, it’s they have to be respectful, Respectful. They have to respect their staff and their customers. Third, they have to believe in team, to unify their team to be able to make sure the customers have a good experience. They have to have a service attitude where it’s all about the customer making sure that they’re satisfied, and then they have to be thankful and grateful for this opportunity to grow with us.
Chad Franzen 12:39
I saw that you guys use kind of what’s considered cutting edge technology. Tell me a little bit about that.
Carl Comeaux 12:44
Yeah, man. So my business partner, Nick Fonteneau, we’ve been together for over ten years in business, but we’ve been friends since we were 18. I’m 38 now, so over 20 years. And Nick has an amazing tech background. We’ve with previous concepts have created proprietary software to run a restaurant, run the franchise development side and so pretty much a one stop shop for all all tech stack. And we weren’t going to do that for Crust. We were actually planning on using third party tech companies, but we’re spoiled. We’re so used to having a custom software to do exactly what we want it to do, and we’re not used to standing in line waiting for new features to come out. So about nine months ago, I went to Nick. We were having issues with our current POS company and I said, look man, I know we were going to just build custom technology around at this point of sale since they have an open API, but it’s just not working. And so we ended up deciding we’re going to create our own, and we’re launching it in two months at one location. And then by the end of 2025, we’ll have all 30 and then plus the new ones. So over 40 locations onto the new point of sale, which is going to be not only a point of sale, but also an app, customer app, a franchisee app, gift card program, a loyalty program, and the list goes on. Inventory management, it’s going to accomplish many things, and we’re going to do it in phases, but the franchisees are going to be so happy with it because it’s going to give them better optics. So that way they can make better decisions on the daily basis in their business, which will then lead to higher, higher profit margins and higher AUVs.
Chad Franzen 14:35
As you kind of oversee expansion. What are some of the keys for you in terms of kind of maintaining brand consistency and things like that?
Carl Comeaux 14:42
Yeah, brand consistency is everything, right? If one location is ordering a different cheese or doing things a different way, then then that’s not a that’s not what a franchise is. And so one thing that we do is we have a quality assessment review that we do every three months, every quarter to all locations. And it’s not an audit like I got you kind of idea. It’s more of, hey, look, I’m I’m coming unannounced, but I’m going to then grab the manager or the owner operator, and we’re going to walk together through this evaluation, and I’m going to coach you on things that you need to improve, because we need to make sure that every franchisee and every location is beating to the same drum.
Chad Franzen 15:37
You know, given the kind of commitment to freshness, commitment to freshness that you guys have, what goes into that for a franchisee in terms of, you know, supply chain?
Carl Comeaux 15:47
Yeah. So supply chain, we have an order guide and they have to order on that order guide. They cannot order at the restaurant depot down the street or grocery store like our order guide is our order guide. And that’s it. And so that makes sure that our quality remains the same no matter what location you go to.
Chad Franzen 16:08
I have one more question for you. But first, how can people find out more about Crust Pizza Co.?
Carl Comeaux 16:13
Yeah, man. So you could go to crustfranchise.com. Also, I’m on LinkedIn, so I’d love for you to connect with me there and. Yeah. And see what we’re doing. We have all our PR releases on on crustfranchise.com. So you can keep up with where we’re going and what we’re doing. It’s exciting. We’re small but mighty.
Chad Franzen 16:34
Yeah, yeah. Sounds awesome. Hey why why only the South or Louisiana? Texas right now.
Carl Comeaux 16:42
To keep quality control and to make sure that every store is feeling supported from day one. If we get outside to Florida or Carolina right now, like it would be hard to support them because it would be so far from us versus now. Any location that we have, we can drive within the same day and be there and then drive back. And so that’s the reason. But we are looking at some franchise prospects right now in the Carolinas. And so we are going to expand. That’s for sure. But we’re being really strategic with it as far as why not outside the southeast? It’s for that same reason. It’s for supply chain support. And just it would be really challenging to make sure that our brand is consistent across the board.
Chad Franzen 17:34
I was hoping you’d come to Colorado where I am. It sounds good.
Carl Comeaux 17:37
Yeah, I mean Colorado. Yeah, I love Colorado. I love I’m there probably 2 or 3 times a year to ski or to hike. So I wouldn’t mind one maybe in 10 to 15 years. But the next ten years we’re pretty locked in on on southeast, the goal is to open up 250 stores in the next nine years. And so this year we should open up closer to 15. Number mark. So the goal is to get to 25, which means that we’ll need to open up development. So far all of our growth has been organic. We haven’t spent $1 on advertising our brand, but this year that’s changed. We are starting to advertise in markets that we want to go into. And so that way we could get to that 25 store openings per year.
Chad Franzen 18:21
So when you open up a new location, you just do. You just open it up and people come or what do you do to get the word out?
Carl Comeaux 18:29
Oh no man, it’s a full process. After we get the CEO, we have of course, the training that takes 2 to 3 weeks. Our training team will go and meet with the franchisee and their manager and, and we do a full on training with their complete staff. And then after that we do a friends and family where we will test out the kitchen. And then we’ll do a VIP day where we’ll invite 4 to 500 guests for the day. They have a specific time. They come in and they get a free meal. So they get a free pizza or pasta or salad and they get to experience it. And we really test the kitchen from a From friends and family, which is more intimate. Around 50 people to 4 to 500 people in a day. And then from there, if the kitchen does really well, then we will open. We will open it up, do a soft opening, and then usually a week or two later we’ll do a grand opening event, which is a big deal. I mean, we have a blow up house, we have a DJ, we have Tavi is our mascot for Crust, like we have tavern cut pizza. So his name is Tavi. He’s a little pizza guy and so kids love taking pictures with him. We have a little Tavi plushies that we give to the kids, and the grand opening is a big deal. And then from there, you know, we have ongoing PR that happens where we interview the franchisee, and usually we’re in the newspapers and the TV station and in that local area, and then of course, ongoing, ongoing marketing. Then it’s all about boots on the ground grassroots marketing. We usually spend around 3 to 5 hours per week on meeting every car, dealership, hospital, school, church, etc. we want to meet everyone and we want everyone to know who we are and that we are ready to not only serve the community, but also give back. And so that’s our strategy from opening to ongoing to make sure that we’re getting the traffic we need in our locations to be wildly successful.
Chad Franzen 20:42
In terms of location. What makes a good location for a place like this?
Carl Comeaux 20:47
Okay, so first off, we look for neighborhood grocery anchored shopping centers. And so that’s that. We want to be in a place where there’s around 7,000 to 8,000 people population within a one-mile radius. And so we love being in the shopping center with great co-tenants that’s connected to the local grocery store, for example, Texas, its HEB or in Louisiana its houses. We love to be by those guys. And the reason is because how often do you grocery shop Chad or your wife?
Chad Franzen 21:23
Maybe once or twice a week?
Carl Comeaux 21:25
Once or twice a week. Right. And so if you’re shopping once a week to your grocer, then every time you go, you’re passing by Crust Pizza. We want to be the local pizzeria in your neighborhood that you stop at. Most people will eat pizza at least twice a month. And so if we’re convenient to you and we have a great product and great service and we have that great awareness since you’re passing by that grocer every week, then we become that. We become that place that you frequent with your family. And we are a family and friend concept. So it’s all about creating memories with your friends or family over a couple couple pies. And so that’s important to us.
Chad Franzen 22:11
Very nice. So last question for you. When you go to Crust Pizza as a customer, what’s kind of your go-to combo of items?
Carl Comeaux 22:21
Yeah. So I usually start with the pepperoni rolls. Man they are fantastic. And I dip it in our homemade ranch dressing. And then from there I usually like our Wyatt’s barbecue chicken pizza. Which is delicious. And then usually I always finish with a cookie monster, which is a chocolate chip cookie in a skillet with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top with drizzled chocolate. That’s my go-to when I’m ready to cheat and I go full in on that cheese bread, pepperoni roll wise barbecue chicken pizza, and then finish it with a good cookie monster.
Chad Franzen 23:04
Nice. Wow. Sounds incredible. Hey, Carl, it’s been great to talk to you. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
Carl Comeaux 23:10 Yeah. Same here Chad. Thanks, man.
Chad Franzen 23:12 So long everybody.
Outro 23:13
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