Cannoli Kitchen is leaning into a quick-service model to bring its Italian fare to customers.
Cannoli Kitchen is expanding with its first set of franchisees after the nearly 30-year-old Florida pizza brand relaunched its franchise system in 2023 with United Franchise Group.
Based in Boca Raton, Cannoli Kitchen got its start in 1996 as a mom-and-pop pizzeria. After building the brand in south Florida with five additional locations, the founders approached UFG about pursuing faster expansion.
Cannoli Kitchen joined UFG’s food division, Big Flavor Brands, in spring 2023, and President Austin Titus believes he has the opportunity to disrupt a crowded category. Titus said the brand’s menu variety and potential for catering differentiates it from the other quick-service pizza brands.
“The catering opportunity with Cannoli Kitchen is so much more than other pizza franchises,” Titus said. “This is stuff people can get for family get-togethers and big business meetings. You can get chicken trays, salad trays and dessert trays. It’s not just catering for a 7-year-old’s pizza party.”
Titus said the brand brings the quality and customer service guests can expect from traditional mom-and-pop Italian restaurants, without the potential for inconsistencies.
“That’s exactly what the franchise system will bring in,” Titus said. “With Cannoli Kitchen, we’re going to build a large-scale, quality franchise chain that shows consistency in the quality.”
Austin Titus is president of Cannoli Kitchen.
Franchise expansion is underway, with six agreements signed for eight units. They will join the six existing locations in Boca Raton, Pompano Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Deerfield Beach, Florida.
The new deals will grow Cannoli Kitchen’s footprint in Florida, with an additional Fort Lauderdale restaurant, as well as locations in Coral Springs, Coconut Creek and Orlando. Other agreements have been signed for Alabama, Georgia and Michigan, the latter being the outlier.
“Our growth strategy is mainly for Florida, but we’re developing in the southeast, too,” Titus said. “We have one store in development in Michigan right outside of Detroit, but that’s the only one. Georgia and Alabama, along with the Carolinas and Texas, those are going to be secondary markets for us while we mainly expand in Florida.”
One franchisee leading Florida’s development is Carla Jackson, who’s opening a Cannoli Kitchen in Fort Lauderdale with her husband, Andre. Jackson, who has a background in social work, said their plan wasn’t necessarily to go into the restaurant industry, but she did want a brand dedicated to good customer service. She said she found that and more with Cannoli Kitchen and UFG.
“I knew I wanted something that was family oriented and a brand that would work with us one-on-one because we had never done anything like this before,” Jackson said. “So far, they’ve been amazing. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned in starting a business and what it takes to maintain the business while also having good quality in the products we offer.”
Titus called the Jacksons a perfect duo who exemplify the type franchisee the brand is searching for.
Franchisees Carla and Andre Jackson are preparing to open a Cannoli Kitchen in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
“In every business we go into, we look for people who can fill really important roles,” Titus said. “In this case, we don’t look for somebody that is really good at making pizza or even really good at running a kitchen. We can hire those aspects of the business. What’s most important to us is someone that wants to be the face of the business, excite customers to come back and that’s what made these two great for Cannoli Kitchen.”
Titus said most of the eight locations will open by the end of 2024, while one may get pushed into early 2025. What’s helping get the restaurants open quickly is the brand’s strategy of going into existing pizzerias.
“We’re not just looking for second-generation buildings,” Titus said. “We look for existing businesses, those that are for sale. Someone that owns a pizzeria, we approach them to either convert their location to Cannoli Kitchen and we bring in all the franchise benefits, or, we acquire the business from the owner and we would ourselves convert it to a Cannoli Kitchen, then find someone to sell it to as a franchise.”
Another part of the strategy, Titus said, is smaller buildouts.
“We’re focused on the quick-service space, where we’ll have locations with very small footprints for people to come in for takeout,” Titus said. “We will have some dine-in space, mostly for the lunch rush that we get, but it’s not our focus. We’re going to be focusing on the off-premises experiences: catering, delivery and takeout.”