Why The Best Pizza Franchise Is Not The Biggest — Yet

Marco’s is gaining industry accolades for quality and growing at the same time

Think quick: What is the best pizza brand?

Chances are, if you’ve ordered a delivery pizza, you ordered from one of the major national brands.

Unless, of course, Marco’s Pizza was an option.

The reality is, when given a choice between Marco’s and the other guys, twice as many people prefer our Ah!thentic ® Italian pizza over the pizza mega-chains.

MRSI, a test kitchen run by Proctor & Gamble, did a four-month study with focus groups to sample Marco’s and other national brands. They asked study participants about their intent to repurchase the brands they’d sampled. The highest scoring test brand earned a 36% intent to repurchase. The Marco’s intent to repurchase score? Twice as high — 72%. That says a lot about our ongoing commitment to consistency and quality, and that ability to retain customers drives up profitability for our franchisees.

It’s also a key reason Marco’s growth trajectory is on an upward swing. We’re almost at 400 units across the country now, and we’re on track to hit 450 by the end of the year and 500 by mid-2014.

“What I like about the pizza segment is you do have the Big Four national brands, and after that it’s fragmented. That gives us a large opportunity in a short period of time,” says CEO Jack Butorac, who took over the Marco’s franchise in 2004.

“If someone was going to invest in a concept, now’s the time to get into the ground floor,” Jack says. “We have been spending years on positioning the concept. We’ve created the great positioning of the brand. We’ve only got 380 stores, and it’s our plan to become the fourth-largest pizza chain.”

Marco’s is all about quality, using only premium meats and toppings, never-frozen cheeses and making our dough fresh in-store daily. We’ve become the fastest-growing pizza franchise in the country, and the industry has taken notice:

• Entrepreneur magazine included us in its Franchise 500 and Fastest Growing categories in 2013.
• Entrepreneur ranked us No. 3 on the list of Top 10 Pizza Franchises in 2012, a list we’ve been steadily climbing every year.
• AllBusiness ranked Marco’s its No. 6 Allstar Franchise System for 2013, based on its top rating for strong financial performance.
• Nation’s Restaurant News ranked Marco’s No. 2 on its list of Top 10 Newcomers.

“From my perspective, the big national brands have chosen a different business model,” says Cameron Cummins, vice president of Franchise Marketing and Recruiting. “They’ve brought an accounting mentality to bringing pizza to the market place. They’re business model first, product second. I think we’ve changed the paradigm. We’ve changed the business model. We focus on product first, business model second.”

Jack and Cameron are looking for investors with business management experience and a passion for quality to join the the fastest growing pizza franchise in the country. If you’ll only put your name behind a brand with integrity, you might be the right fit for the Marco’s team. Fill out the form at right or give us a call at 1-800-262-7267. We’d love to hear from you!