Three Reasons Marco’s Growth is Picking Up Speed

The right team tops the list at the fastest-growing pizza franchise in the country

With more than 400 stores, Marco’s Pizza ® is the fastest-growing pizza franchise in the U.S. We’re excited by our growth, and we’re quickly approaching our goal of becoming the fourth-largest pizza chain. Franchisees are continuing to look to Marco’s for the opportunity to lock down prime locations. Here’s a look at the tested strategies that are powering our growth.

1. Marco’s has a team of franchising experts. One reason we are the fastest-growing pizza franchise is because our management team is made up of franchising experts. Our CEO, Jack Butorac, has been leading Marco’s since 2004, and he has more than 30 years of experience in the restaurant industry. His specialty is turning quality restaurants into national chains.

President and Chief Operating Officer, who joined Marco’s in 2005, was Senior Director of Franchise Development for YUM! Brands and Vice President of Franchise Development for Yorkshire Global Restaurants, the parent company of A&W and Long John Silver’s. Cameron Cummins, Vice President of Development, has worked at industry giants YUM! brands and Dunkin’ Donuts. Cathy Hull, our Chief Marketing Officer, was on ExecRank’s 2012 list of Top Private Company Marketing Executives. Cathy also has extensive experience in the food industry.

The story is the same for our entire management team, who have decades of franchise experience at Domino’s, Little Caesars and Papa John’s. Our managers know how to build a brand, how to delight customers and how to support franchise owners.

Pamela Billow is a Marco’s franchisee in Las Vegas. She and her husband came to Marco’s after opening stores with franchisors Quiznos and Ritter’s Frozen Custard. They were frustrated with their experiences at these brands and decided to try Marco’s.

Pamela explains: “[Marco’s] had a top-quality product and all the right people in management positions at corporate. We knew they were going to make the right decisions and put in the right infrastructure for growth.”

2. Marco’s pays attention to detail. We pride ourselves on the taste, quality and freshness of our product. We don’t use frozen ingredients, and we never have. Marco’s pizzas are made with only the freshest ingredients, beginning with dough that’s prepared from scratch in our stores every day, using spring wheat flour from grain grown in Minnesota.

“We’re meticulous when it comes to our dough recipe,” says Mark Scibiorski, Marco’s Director of Operational Training. “We train everyone from the owner to the dough-makers the recipe that we follow to the letter. … We take a lot of time, effort and training on the proper technique of turning the perfect dough into the perfect crust.”

Next is our sauce, prepared from an Italian recipe and made from an organic hybrid tomato that was developed specifically for Marco’s. We also have a proprietary blend of spices that is blended into the sauce daily at our stores.

The same time and care are taken with our toppings. No frozen cheese substitutes here. Instead, our pizzas are topped with a blend of three cheeses from Wisconsin and Iowa. Our other toppings include two types of pepperoni and sweet Italian sausage that’s the size of a meatball.

Finally, we bake a pizza at our stores daily and score it in different categories to ensure that it is up to the exacting standards that have made us the fastest-growing pizza franchise in the country.

You can taste the difference when you eat a Marco’s pizza.

3. Marco’s is different from the competition. Marco’s founder Pasquale “Pat” Giammarco spent his early childhood in Italy, making us the only pizza franchise founded by a native Italian. Pat and his father created the recipe we use for our pizza sauce, part of our Ah!thentic ® Italian pizza.

 

We like to think of ourselves as the Five Guys Burgers and Fries of the pizza industry. Our pizzas are priced a little higher — reflecting the top-quality ingredients we use — but, like a Five Guys burger, our pizza is worth it.

Another thing that sets Marco’s apart is our ability to delight customers. Marco’s hired MRSI, the Procter & Gamble Test Kitchen, to conduct a four-month focus group study. The overwhelming majority of testers who tried our pizza — 72% — said they’d buy from Marco’s again. Only half that number — 36% — said they would buy pizzas from the other delivery franchises that were tested.

“When I first opened, the phone would ring after we delivered a pizza,” says Franklin, TN, franchise owner Stuart Field, who has 20 years in the pizza industry. “In fact, in our opening week, we received over 70 positive phone calls. … It’s a great business to own.”

In addition, our same-store sales have increased for nearly every quarter since 2004, another reason that we’re the country’s fastest-growing pizza franchise. Unlike some of our larger competitors, thought, Marco’s still has prime territories available for franchisees, including regions for multi-unit development.

If you’d like to join our dynamic and growing company, please 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!