Why Marco’s Pizza ® Franchise Insists on Perfection

We train everyone at Marco’s Pizza ® franchise to make — and spot —the perfect pie

Is it too much to ask that every pizza be perfect? Not if you want to maintain the kind of excellence that Marco’s is dedicated to. The kind of excellence that has made us the fastest-growing pizza franchise company in the country. The kind of excellence that has twice as many consumers choosing to repurchase a Marco’s pizza than pizza from those other guys. The kind of excellence that propelled our 33% growth rate last year.

Ours is the only national pizza franchise founded by a native Italian. We’ve perfected our crust, made only from Minnesota-grown spring wheat flour because of its high protein content. We long ago perfected our sauce, made from an old Italian family recipe and a hybrid tomato developed especially for Marco’s.

Now, we have a training component on how to make — and spot — the perfect pie.

“We call it a ‘WOW’ pizza — when you open the box, you say ‘WOW!’” says Mark Scibiorski, Marco’s Director of Operational Training. “If you order five toppings on the pizza, when you take a bite, you should be able to taste all five toppings. The person ordering deserves a perfect pie.”

“We’re meticulous when it comes to our dough recipe,” Mark says. “We train everyone from the owner to the dough makers the recipe that we follow to the letter. It’s the science of dough management. That’s one of the more challenging tasks to learn in our store. We take a lot of time, effort and training on the proper technique of turning the perfect dough into the perfect crust.”

Next up is the sauce, and as you can imagine, not just any sauce will do. Marco’s used to combine three tomatoes for the perfect blend, but now we use a hybrid tomato that was developed especially for us that combines the elements of all three tomatoes. The spice blend, added in-store, is from an old Italian family recipe.

“It has a unique flavor, kind of a tangy taste,” Mark says. “It has to be placed on the pie a certain way. We have techniques and steps on how to place it, guidelines on how far from the edge it should be. That’s all part of mastering that skill level and technique. Once the employee masters that, they add the three-cheese blend, fresh, never frozen. There’s some technique and skill to cheesing the pizza, and of course we top it all off with our delicious toppings — premium meats and fresh produce.”

Oven time and temperature are carefully calibrated, but it typically takes 6 minutes and 10 seconds. “It’s very specific,” Mark says.

One of the key things we do is to apply the PEP — the Pizza Evaluation Process — to a pizza twice a day.

We dissect a pizza and examine its quality characteristics from the inside out, Mark says. “We take the dough ball, stretch it, sauce it, cheese it, bake it with no toppings and let it set for five minutes on a board to cool. Then we cut it, take every other slice and flip it over and cut that slice again, and then fold it and look at the inside of the slice. We’re looking for certain quality characteristics. The inside of the crust should be fluffy with a nice texture. We measure the height and width of the crust. We listen for that crunch.”

We score the pizza in different categories and make sure everything is up to our standards. For instance, if there’s an issue with the dough based on the test, we figure out what’s wrong and recalibrate.

Making sure every pizza is perfect every time is all about being on the same page and pulling together as a team. A team is only as strong as its weakest link, and at Marco’s, we don’t believe in having any weak links. If everybody stays in the same phenomenal shape, you’re going to end up with a phenomenal team preparing awesome “WOW” pizzas.

“Everyone in the company can see immediately if it’s not perfect from 10 yards away,” says Cameron Cummins, Vice President of Franchise Marketing & Recruiting. “Everybody in the company can walk in and see immediately if a pizza is not perfect… and why it’s not perfect.”

If you’ve done your research, you already know that the secret to successful franchising is consistency. You have to be able to produce the same results, every time. At Marco’s, we’re looking for nothing less than perfection.

We are excited about our rapid growth, and there’s never been a better time for the new or experienced investor to join a proven concept. At Marco’s, we’re on the cusp of a huge growth trend, and that means the savvy entrepreneur can still get in on the ground floor. We have 400-plus units across the United States, and we plan to hit the 500-store mark by mid-2014. We have another 1,000 stores in development.

If you’d like to join a company that’s willing to train you to achieve perfection, fill out the form at right or give us a call at 1-800-262-7267 to start a conversation — and go ahead and check out our Facebook page and Twitter while you’re at it!