Why Marco’s Customers Keep Buying Pizza Franchises
Franchisees share a passion for the Marco’s product
It’s not unusual for first-time customers to come to Marco’s Pizza® to try our food and leave with plans to open their own Marco’s Pizza franchise. Their passion has made Marco’s the country’s fastest-growing pizza franchise.
“Our franchisees come from a remarkably wide variety of backgrounds. But there’s a common thread among our franchisees — passion for the Marco’s product. Almost half of them were Marco’s consumers first. They fell in love with our product,” says Cameron Cummins, vice president of development for Marco’s Pizza.
We opened our 500th store in June 2014 and have already reached 600 locations. We are on track to have 1,000 stores across the country by early 2017. Plans are under way to expand internationally to serve growing demand in India, Saudi Arabia, Asia and Africa.
Customers like Eric Bueter are helping to drive Marco’s growth. Eric was a 23-year-old newlywed when he bought his first Marco’s Pizza® franchise in 1986. As a young entrepreneur, Eric had already owned a fitness center, and he sold it to buy his first Marco’s. “I looked at all of the major competitors, but I was eating Marco’s Pizza at the time and loved the product,” he says.
Twenty-seven years later, he still loves Marco’s, and he has built seven stores throughout Northwest Ohio.
Great taste, our commitment to quality that keeps customers coming back, the availability of prime locations, the affordable cost of opening stores, and support throughout the organization makes Marco’s an unbeatable investment, Eric says.
“It starts with the product. Everything is really fresh. We aren’t using frozen dough or commissary ingredients that are three days old by the time you get them. We cut the onions and green peppers ourselves. Our cheese is 100% dairy cheese,” he says. “There are a lot of great people in the Marco’s organization. You can pick up the phone and talk to the owner of the highest-volume store in the chain if you want to. You can talk to franchisees who own multiple stores. I encourage new franchisees to pick up the phone and call the Marco’s veterans. They’ll stop you from making tons of mistakes. How many companies can you pick up the phone and be able to talk to just about anybody you need to?”
One exciting aspect of the Marco’s Pizza® franchise opportunity is that great locations are still available nationwide. The biggest competing chains have drained their growth potential by saturating their markets with tens of thousands of stores. There’s still plenty of demand for their product, but there is limited territory. Marco’s still has prime territories available for new franchises and is rapidly gaining market share in the $46 billion annual U.S. pizza market, according to CHD Expert.
The website AllBusiness.com, one of the world’s largest online resources for small businesses, calls location “critical” and says no other decision is more important. Pick the wrong spot and “you’re less likely to succeed” no matter how hard you try, the editors warn. And there are plenty of “right spots” available for Marco’s Pizza®.
Opening a Marco’s Pizza franchise is relatively inexpensive compared with the cost of starting other casual dining restaurants, and owners don’t need to have restaurant experience. Marco’s educates our franchise owners on everything they need to know.
“You can get into a store for $300,000, so you can open multiple stores. You have recurring revenue if you take care of the store and the customers, because they’ll come back time and again. It has wide market appeal … everybody loves pizza,” Eric says.
Learn more
For in-depth details about the Marco’s franchise opportunity, download our free franchise report. You can also learn more by visiting our research pages.
