June
20, 2021
Read 7 minutes
As the general manager of a Pie Five Pizza restaurant, Joel Roberts sometimes worked alone in the restaurant. This wasn’t usually a problem for the understaffed franchise location, but it did pose a major problem when Roberts had a medical emergency in 2017. He couldn’t find anyone to cover his otherwise unmanned shift, so he resorted to his next best option – his papa.
Steve Roberts showed up to take his son’s shift but was not happy to find the restaurant was running out of food, working on broken machinery, and not being clean.
“[Steve] got up there and said, ‘Oh man, what a mess. Give me your boss’s phone number right away, ”says Joel.
Steve was so mad at the clutter that he called the owner to voice his complaints. Instead of refuting the father’s complaints, the owner responded by asking Steve if he would like to buy the shop front. Despite his lack of business experience, he did. In 2018, Steve officially signed the ownership papers with the intention of turning the establishment inside out.
What Steve lacked in business experience he made up for with enthusiasm. After making the decision to own the Pie Five site, he devoted a month of his time looking to the restaurant’s problems.
“I spoke to employees: ‘What do you see? What’s the good, the bad about this place? ‘”He says. “Of course they tell me because they know I was Joel’s father and they had no idea I was going to buy it.”
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Address bad things before they get worse
Steve found two glaring problems in the Pie Five store. The first dealt with the internal culture of the restaurant and its staff. Not only was it understaffed – the store failed to motivate employees to take an interest in the company. Some employees gave away products for free, consumed company supplies all day, and even stole from the pizzeria. The staffing problem was so severe that the former owner, Steve, recommended firing all of the restaurant’s employees and hiring new ones.
Aside from the internal issues, the biggest issue, according to Steve, was the store’s external reputation. Steve was well aware of the store’s bad reputation as he didn’t even order from the restaurant before becoming the owner. An online search confirmed the store’s bad reputation: reviewers rated it 2.3-star on Google, with complaints ranging from poor service to a dirty storefront.
There are a number of factors that have contributed to the restaurant’s reputation, but Steve says one of the main reasons was its ownership. Although he had a restaurant in Ankeny, Iowa, the previous owner ran the restaurant from Illinois. This time, the father who became the owner opted for a more practical solution.
Many of Steve’s solutions came from life experience. His two decades as a foreman at the railway led him, for example, to the motivation problems of his employees. On the railroad, companies encouraged their employees by offering small prizes as a reward for their hard work. As a result, Steve followed the same strategy, offering gift cards to employees when they completed their training and became familiar with Pie Five Pizza resources.
More importantly, Steve was honest with his staff in order to get them to look after them.
“I showed them the numbers. I showed them that this box of cheese was $ 200, and if they keep making the products the way they do it, it’ll cost me an additional $ 30,000 a year, ”he says.
Steve also used this type of involvement to improve the franchise’s reputation. Taking advantage of his deep community involvement as a third generation Ankeny resident and a board member of the Little League, he announced to the community that he was the new owner of the Pie Five Pizza on social media. Although he didn’t have the capital to sponsor parishioners, Steve handed out free pizza coupons and fed churches, animal rescues, and nursing homes among other community groups. He made up for bad reviews by offering discounts to his customers so they could give Pie Five another chance. As the owner, he even told his customers how much money he was making in order to be more transparent.
“All these other restaurants tell me, ‘Hey man, you’re pretty sober when you tell people how much you make in a day,'” says Steve. “These people make us so why shouldn’t they know what we’re doing?”
When the business implemented these changes, Steve said the positive results were immediately apparent. With Steve running the restaurant and Joel at the helm, the restaurant managed to move from $ 5,000 a week to doubling that amount. The franchise location gained a new reputation as a role model for others and won a handful of awards at the company’s 2019 Pie Five Pizza Summit, including Rookie of the Year and Turnaround Store of the Year.
Despite all the support the restaurant has received from the community, the father admits that the success he has now achieved would not have been possible without the support of a franchisor.
“If you already have this franchise and all the legwork done for you, all you have to do is call someone or look it up in a book,” says Steve. “Pie Five was amazing to me. They let me go out of the box more than they probably should have. “
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A cinematic moment
Measuring the success of Steve’s out-of-the-box ideas for improving store culture and community engagement can be difficult to quantify. But perhaps the greatest anecdotal evidence of the franchisee’s success came when the store hit rock bottom during the pandemic. In a situation not uncommon for the restaurant industry in 2020, Steve had to raise $ 8,000 over a weekend or expect the store to close. So he went online and pleaded for help on social media. The result was a local blogger survival achievement versus the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, as the store made $ 28,000 in three days.
“People came up to me and gave me money, didn’t even eat in the restaurant because our line was so long,” says Steve. “It just makes you cry.”
It’s hard to imagine a business with the ability to garner so much support was the same restaurant that barely drew customers just a few years ago. But some values have stayed the same from the start – being there for his son is what brought Steve to the franchise in the first place, and family continues to be a priority.
“You really learn what family is and what family needs when it comes to owning something, leading something and being successful. You have to be there together, otherwise it won’t be successful, ”says Steve. “I am blessed with my family and I am blessed to have such a large following and support.”
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