A new sense of urgency pervades Blaze Pizza.
“It’s as simple as negative 6 percent comps,” said Chief Marketing Officer Christian Kuhn. “It’s the franchisees saying, what are you doing to drive my business? We don’t have the luxury of slow.”
On the job for just over four months, Kuhn is the architect of a brand repositioning effort and menu revamp that will introduce 14 new products—and in the process completely change a signature pizza line that hadn’t been touched in more than 10 years. It’s a switch Kuhn, CEO Beto Guajardo and other leaders say is overdue and necessary if the company wants to recapture the momentum it had in 2019 when it had 314 locations.
As fast-casual pizza chains such as Pieology, Pie Five, MOD Pizza and their ilk ushered in a heyday for the category in the early 2010s, Blaze Pizza and its build-your-own model moved faster than most. Founders Rick and Elise Wetzel grew the brand to 300 units between 2012 and 2018 to earn the No. 1 spot on the Franchise Times Fast & Serious list.
Blaze Pizza CEO Beto Guajardo says the company is in “an incredible position of strength” to introduce change to the system.
More recently, though, its unit count contracted, falling to 296 stores in the United States by the end of the 2023. (Blaze has another 18 stores in Canada and two in Bahrain.) Average unit volume held steady at $1.3 million last year for traditional franchised restaurants ($1.2 million for mall locations), while traditional corporate locations did $1.7 million.
The category overall is showing signs of struggle. MOD Pizza closed 26 underperforming locations in the first quarter to take it down to 527 units. Pieology’s U.S. store count dipped by 10 to finish 2023 at 109; it had 124 in 2019. Non-franchised &Pizza, which underwent a CEO change last year, is flat at 55 restaurants.
Guajardo, who joined Blaze in January 2023 after leading the international team at Focus Brands (now GoTo Foods) and has since brought in an almost entirely new C-suite of fellow GoTo alums, believes now is the moment of opportunity for Blaze.
Sitting inside a flagship restaurant at the sprawling Disney Springs shopping and entertainment complex in Orlando June 13, it would be roughly two hours before a deluge of influencers, food bloggers and franchisees descended for a media event and to sample the new “Chef Inspired and Fast Fire’d Signatures Collection.”
“We are in an incredible position of strength with our owners, with our guests and with our financial position. We are unique in the industry in all three of those variables, which is why we’re doing what we’re doing now,” said Guajardo. “We’re coming out swinging, stronger than ever, creating a new refined and fast-fired Blaze Pizza.”
“We are very, very fortunate that we have a strong balance sheet,” he continued. “And that makes us unique in this industry.”
Brentwood Associates, the same private equity firm that owns Chicken Salad Chick, Hissho Sushi and others, is the majority owner of Blaze Pizza and is supporting the brand overhaul, noted Guajardo.
Brentwood, added Kuhn, “has given us the green light to go make change.”
Blaze’s new Sweet & Spicy Collection features hot honey and chili oil drizzles, plus cheesy breads and other items.
New menu, new marketing and a new nonprofit partner
Blaze Pizza had “lost its edge” and “kinda gotten complacent,” said Kuhn of the lack of menu innovation over the past decade. With the introduction of its all-new signature collection, now available nationwide, and subsequent new products coming in August, Kuhn said the refresh emphasizes the brand’s “fast-fired” position and gives consumers a new reason to visit its restaurants.
Among the six signature pizzas available now are The Carnivore, with pepperoni, ham and crumbled meatballs; The Herbivore with mushrooms, roasted garlic, banana peppers and fresh arugula; and The Blazed BBQ with barbecue sauce, mozzarella, grilled chicken and pickled jalapenos.
A new cinnamon bread dessert will debut in July, followed in August by pizza topping options such as sweet hot honey drizzle. This summer will also see the introduction of new cheesy breads that take advantage of Blaze’s versatile dough, which is made in house. Joining the cheesy breads later this summer are two new salads, a Pizza Shop Chop Salad and Grapes, Gorgonzola and Green Salad, which can come atop a pizza crust, akin to a bread bowl.
Chief Marketing Officer Christian Kuhn is pushing a new brand position at Blaze Pizza.
The company is also learning from the trial last year of a monthly value menu promotion. That “What’s Hot” program, introduced in June 2023, didn’t drive sales and traffic as expected and instead resulted in customers trading down to less expensive items. “It didn’t benefit the bottom line,” said Kuhn, who pointed to a “2 for $28” bundle promo the company ran in May as an example of the direction he plans to take marketing efforts.
“You’re going to see us coming out with value, but not necessarily value in a pure discounting manner, but rather bundling offers together to get people to think about experiencing Blaze, not just by themselves, but with their friends and with their family,” noted Guajardo.
Customer traffic, said Kuhn, isn’t where it was a year ago “but we don’t have to accept it. My job is to get it up 3, 4 percent.” Working with new media agency Amp, which in a first for Blaze will coordinate efforts across all marketing channels, Kuhn aims to also increase aided and unaided brand awareness with strategic campaigns.
“There’s competition everywhere, so we need to be noisy,” he said.
Wayne Albritton, managing partner of Millennial Restaurant Group and a Blaze franchisee for more than 10 years, said he’s encouraged by the menu changes and renewed energy of the franchisor.
“We’ve been pretty much the same for 10 years, so to get new pizzas, new flavors, we’re very excited,” said Albritton, whose group owns the Disney Springs restaurant along with 26 others in Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee. He noted Millennial’s locations perform “well above the system average” in sales, which he credited to engaged operating partners who have an equity stake in the business.
Millennial, he continued, has also adjusted its own operations over the years, such as by delivering food to customers’ tables and introducing its own salad program that features a half pizza and side salad combo. “That’s been a very good lunch driver for us,” he said.
Part of Blaze’s franchise advisory council, Albritton added the company’s new leadership is “very open to new ideas and collaboration.”
Elsewhere on the menu innovation front are Folds, similar to a calzone or stromboli. The items are a nod to a new initiative announced during the media event that has Blaze partnering with Folds of Honor. The nonprofit foundation awards scholarships to the spouses and children of fallen or disabled members of the military and first responders.
Blaze presented Folds of Honor with a $10,000 donation, and in August will launch an ongoing roundup program allowing guests to round up their bill total to make a donation to the organization. Blaze also created a Trail Blazing Pie-oneers Program to recognize people making a difference around the world and in their communities. Folds of Honor CEO Lt. Col. Dan Rooney is the first recipient, and the second is Albritton. The company recognized Albritton during the Disney Springs event for the creation of Flames of Support, a fund for Millennial Restaurant Group employees who are experiencing a hardship or crisis. Blaze made a $10,000 to that fund.
Blaze in August will introduce Folds, similar to a calzone or stromboli and starting with spicy pepperoni option.
More change on the way
With its roots in the build-your-own category, Blaze must strike a balance between customization and a need for speed, explained Guajardo. Competing against the likes of Chipotle, Cava and Sweetgreen, which all build orders along a production line, the difference for Blaze is once a customer has made their ingredient selections “we still have 180 seconds to go to fast-fire it.”
With changes such as the new pizza lineup—which brings to mind Subway’s shift in 2022 away from customization to its Subway Series sandwiches to streamline operations—Blaze will improve its ticket times while still providing “great hospitality.” The build-your-own choices will remain Blaze’s “bread and butter,” continued Guajardo, but curated options will help with production speed.
In pursuit of increased digital sales—about 28 percent of sales are from off-premises channels—Blaze is testing new kitchen equipment in corporate stores to make pizzas for pickup and delivery on a backline operation that reduces labor and, said Guajardo, allows for the firing of pizzas 30 percent faster than the conventional oven. The new equipment is also optimized for 14-inch pizza production, versus the 11-inch pizzas typically ordered in stores.
“You’re going to see us leaning in, heavy, on promoting 14-inch pizza sales for pickup and delivery going forward,” he said.
Another move, this one literal, will come when Blaze relocates its headquarters from Pasadena, California, to Atlanta. Expected to be completed by early September, Blaze will join other major restaurant companies such as Inspire Brands and GoTo Foods in what Guajardo called a “hub” for restaurant talent.
Atlanta, he continued, “is just a better fit for us and for where and how we want to grow. It has nothing to do with the minimum wage increases in California. We love California, our roots are in California.
“It was a very difficult decision, because we have a lot of connections into the communities of California, but for the next phase of growth, and for us to get to that 1,000 stores that we seek, Atlanta was a better choice for us.”
He pointed as well to some cost savings. The company was able to find the same quality and size of office space while paying 40 percent less in rent.
On the development front, the company in its franchise disclosure document projected 10 new unit openings this year. More international expansion is also on tap, said Kevin Moran, the chief development officer who joined Blaze last year and was on Guajardo’s international team at GoTo Foods.
The brand signed an agreement with NAD Trading for five units in the United Arab Emirates. NAD, led by chairman Nabeel Dabwan, last year acquired the Blaze restaurant in Bahrain’s capital of Manama and is opening additional locations in that country.
“We’re building the pipeline, we’re getting it full,” Moran said.