When Oath Pizza opened in a tiny, 600-square foot store in Nantucket, Massachusetts in 2015, its title derives from its founder’s oath to serve the neighborhood and supply “really feel good pizza.” Since then, it has expanded within the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic areas with 29 places.
It’s rising principally by franchising. Of its 29 outposts, 21 are franchised and eight are company-owned. It has raised $16 million in enterprise capital funding for its enlargement orchestrated by Boston-based VC agency Breakaway Ventures.
However its CEO Drew Kellogg says that increasing by franchising and including company-owned shops serves as an “environment friendly enterprise mannequin. We will management the company surroundings and never must fly everywhere in the nation.” Oath Pizza operates with a smaller footprint than most pizza chains by way of retailer measurement, requiring fewer workers, making it nimbler.
Therefore its enterprise mannequin relies on one to 4 workers, and retains its substances streamlined, which additionally reduces its provide chain. It could possibly rent extra for “hospitality,” he says.
Oath Pizza, which is headquartered in Boston, was began by Doug Ferriman, who was often known as a pizza connoisseur. “Pizza was his ardour,” explains Oath Pizza CMO Stacie Colburn Hayes. However Ferriman offered its rights and moved on to different alternatives.
Oath Pizza is increasing with a advertising and marketing message that emphasizes contemporary, tasty substances, and a enterprise mannequin that mixes franchising with company-owned retailers.
Kellogg and Hayes, former executives at Chipotle who joined Oath Pizza in 2018, additionally underscore that Oath serves “better-for-you pizza.” It customizes its pizza, presents vegan and gluten-free choices, however is it wholesome?
Kellogg describes its aggressive edge as “making it straightforward to eat higher with out giving up the meals you like.” He mentioned its crust is “hand-stretched, grilled in avocado oil and topped with actual, high-quality substances, and house-made sauces.” He describes the crust as “skinny and isn’t primarily based on quick-rising yeast. You don’t really feel heavy once you eat it.”
Hayes notes that Oath Pizza avoids the “greasy, tacky, consolation meals pizza that you just get in New York Metropolis or on school campuses.” Oath Pizza has “reimagined” the pizza to depend on “personalized, contemporary toppings,” she states.
She provides that it’s not claiming the pizza is “wholesome. We’re offering toppings that aren’t processed and have prime quality substances.”
For instance, she says it makes use of “unbromated flour, a high-protein baking flour that doesn’t include potassium bromate, which helps its elasticity, however is broadly thought-about to be unhealthy.”
However Walter Willett, a professor of Epidemiology and Vitamin on the Harvard T.H. Chan Faculty of Public Well being, who reviewed Oath Pizza’s substances however hasn’t tasted it, isn’t satisfied. Willett famous that the unbromated flour “seems like a advertising and marketing distraction as there isn’t a proof that unbromated refined starch is healthier than typical refined starch.”
Willett says a extra nutritious pizza is doable. “A fairly wholesome pizza is feasible if the crust is primarily entire grains, salt is low and the toppings are primarily greens,” he says. However Willett cited that “As this description is silent on these points, I’d assume this product is just not good for anybody till proven in any other case.”
Sarcastically, when John Schnatter based Papa John’s in 1984, now the nation’s third largest pizza chain with over 5,500 retailers, he used the tag line, “Higher substances. Higher pizza,” not too dissimilar from the pitch at Oath Pizza.
Nonetheless, Oath Pizza’s franchising efforts have taken off. In 2018, Oath Pizza began its franchising efforts and shortly nabbed two powerhouses: Aramark, the Fortune 500 meals companies firm, adopted by Covellli Enterprises, the most important Panera franchisee.
Lots of its outlets are within the better Boston environs, but it surely has stretched to New York Metropolis, Philadelphia, Northern Virginia, Ohio and onto school campuses together with Arizona State, James Madison College and College of South Carolina.
Apart from pizza, it sells salads, bread sticks, dessert and presents a youngsters’s menu.
As soon as the pandemic hit, Oath Pizza tapped Goldbelly, the nationwide on-line restaurant supply service, to spice up gross sales. Hayes says that Goldbelly “had been a terrific platform to increase the attain throughout the nation.” It could possibly ship in a single day wherever for an additional price, or two days by way of UPS and the pizza have to be heated in an oven.
Oath additionally presents the array of third-party deliverers, which Hayes says attracts new purchasers, along with their loyal ones.
Requested why they might urge a buyer to decide on Oath Pizza if a Papa John’s or Domino’s Pizza had been all on the identical nook, Kellogg replies that Papa John’s has been round for 40 years “and so they’re drained. They do a wonderful job of what they do. Domino’s Pizza has develop into a expertise firm. Attempt us: we’re new and totally different.”
Their expertise at Chipotle taught them about “respect for high-quality meals, meals integrity, and distinctive customer support,” Kellogg asserts.
Two years from as we speak, Oath Pizza intends to increase the pipeline of places and likewise begin promoting its merchandise by way of shopper packages items in supermarkets.
Kellogg describes the three keys to its success as: 1) Sustaining the standard of its pizza as a result of prospects are asking for extra management of what they’re selecting to eat, 2) Sustaining its rock-star staff of workers, 3) Having survived the pandemic has made their will to succeed solely stronger.
